The Last House on Needless Street(71)

I reach around and drive it into his stomach. The point punctures flesh with a crisp sound like an apple bitten into. I thought it would be soft, flesh, but inside Ted is a mess of objects and textures. There is resistance; it is hard to thrust the blade in. It is even more horrible than I could have imagined. I hardly hear myself crying, over Ted’s screaming. The sound drives a bird from a nearby bush, plummeting upwards into the sky. I wish I could go with it.

The first thing is the pain. The nerves in our body are alight with it. The black cloth drops away. Lauren and I fall face first onto the rough floor of the forest. Our cheek is thurst hard into the mess of slick leaves and twigs; we’re half in and half out of the stream; water runs cold over our legs. Our heart chugs unevenly, like a car about to stall.

Lauren? I say. Why are we bleeding? Why can’t we get up?





Dee





Dee puts the tape recorder on the table. It was not easy to find. None of the electronics outlets stock them. In the end she overpaid for this one in a vinyl store downtown.

She puts the cassette in and presses play with a trembling finger.

‘Please come and arrest Ted for murder,’ a little, anxious voice says. ‘And other things. They have the death penalty in this state, I know that …’

It’s a short recording, lasting maybe a minute. Dee listens without breathing. Then she rewinds and listens to it again. Then she listens further, in case there is another recording after this one. But it’s just some medical student’s notes. A woman with a slight accent Dee cannot place, and a voice like a clear bell.

She sits back. It is Lulu. Older, yes. But Dee cannot mistake her sister’s tones. Now that the moment has arrived and she has proof, Dee does not know what to do. She puts a hand on her heart, which is pounding. It feels swollen, likely to burst.

She should tell tired Karen about all this, take her the tape. She will, as soon as she can lift her head from her hands.

There comes a familiar sound from outside. Thunk, thunk, thunk.

Dee’s body becomes electric. She goes to the darkened window. Ted has come out into the back yard. He stands for a moment, listening. He looks around. Dee stays still as a post. She hopes the moonlight reflecting on the windowpane will hide her silhouette. Apparently it does, because Ted nods to himself, and goes to the tangle of blue elder that overruns the eastern corner of the yard. He digs with his hands.

Ted takes something from the ground. He shakes it free of earth, and then slides it briefly from its sheath. A long hunting knife. The blade reflects the moonlight. He puts the knife on his belt and goes into the house.

When he emerges again some minutes later, he has a bag on his back. He goes slowly out of his yard, towards the forest. As Dee watches, the bag seems to move. She is sure it’s twitching in the faint light.

Dee’s mind clears. Everything becomes cold and hard. There is no time for Karen. Lulu must be saved – and there is a monster to be dealt with. Get it done, Dee Dee, she thinks.

Dee runs to the closet and grabs the spray can of fluorescent paint, the clawhammer and the thick, snake-proof boots she bought for this moment. She throws on her hoodie, jacket, ties the laces with shaking hands. She emerges from her house and closes the door quietly behind her, in time to see Ted vanish under the trees. His flashlight dances on the night air.

Dee bends low to the ground and runs after him on silent feet. This time nothing will stop her.

Fifty feet into the forest, where the streetlight can still be glimpsed through the branches, she stops and blazes the trunk of a beech tree with the reflective yellow paint. Branches brush her face and drag at her legs. The forest at night is slippery, it clings. She tries to quiet her breath.

The words she heard on the tape run through her mind over and over. Nothing but the peaceful dark. Lulu.

Ted leaves the path, and overhead the moon is obscured by reaching branches. Dee blazes a trunk every fifty feet. She keeps Ted’s flashlight in her sights, focusing on it so hard that it blurs into a starry glow. After a time she feels the woods change. Dee is no longer in the place where families walk. She is in the wild, where bears roam and hikers’ bones are never found.

The whisper of leaf to leaf begins to sound like a rattle shaken by a sinuous tail. Shut UP, she thinks, exhausted. There is no godDAMN rattlesnake. How long has she been a prisoner of fear, she wonders? Years and years. It is time to be free.

Dee’s foot slips on a muddy branch. The branch slides under her foot in a muscular movement. At the same moment her torch beam catches it, just ahead of her right toe on the forest floor. The diamond pattern is all too familiar. The sharp, light rattle, like dried rice shaken in a bag. The snake rears back slowly with the grace of a nightmare, poises to strike, eyes reflecting green. It is about four feet long, young. Dee’s torchlight dances crazily over the cairn of rock behind, which most likely serves as its home.

Fear spreads through her veins like ink. She screams but it comes out as a slight whistle. The snake sways. Perhaps it is sluggish having just awakened, maybe it is blinded by the flashlight, but it gives Dee the moment she needs.

Keeping the beam steady, she steps forward and swings. She knows that if she misses, she is dead.

The clawhammer hits the snake’s blunt, swaying head with a crack. At her second blow the snake drops limp to the forest floor. Dee leans over it, panting. ‘Take that,’ she whispers.