The Night Visitors(50)
He cocks his head, considering the man on the floor. “Nah,” he says, “too much trouble.” Then he shoots Jason in the head.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Alice
BLOOD SPRAYS ON my shoes and over my legs, and a smell like copper pipes hits me in the back of the throat.
“Why’d you do that?” I cry.
I’m not sure if I’m going to throw up or pass out. Mattie squeezes my arm so hard that the pain helps keep me from doing either. I look at her and see that she’s pale but her jaw is set and she’s staring at Davis like he’s a science experiment.
“Too much trouble to keep track of the three of you,” Davis says, his mouth stretched into something between a grin and a snarl. “Besides”—he looks up, his eyes glittering like he’s got a fever—“he was gonna mess with you. You two should be thanking me. And you can start by getting me something to eat and a nice cold beer. Woo-hee! Killing’s thirsty work!”
My stomach turns. Davis looks like he does when he’s playing World of Warcraft. The reek of blood hits my throat again and I gag.
“Let’s get upstairs,” Mattie says, propelling me forward. “There’s nothing we can do for Jason.”
“You sound almost sorry for him,” Davis says as he follows us up, holding the gun to my back. “Maybe the idea of a man breaking into your house turns you on. Maybe that’s why you leave all your doors unlocked. I mean, when was the last time you got laid?”
Mattie flinches and I instantly regret that I wondered the same thing when I went through her bedroom. The thought that living with Davis for two years has made me anything like him sickens me almost as much as seeing what happened to Jason. Only Mattie’s grip on my arm keeps me moving up the stairs.
Davis holds the flashlight so we can see our way but the beam is dim and flickering. At the top of the stairs he moves the beam over the darkened kitchen and I catch a flicker of movement in the doorway leading to the front door. My heart stops at the thought that it could be Oren, but Davis keeps moving his flashlight over the kitchen counters so he must not have seen what I did.
“We need to get a fire going in the woodstove,” Mattie says. “It’s right over there.” She points at the corner opposite to where I saw the movement. Maybe she saw it too and wants to make sure Davis doesn’t.
“Okay,” Davis says. “Here’s the plan. Allie and I are going to sit down here at the kitchen table while you get that stove going and warm us up something to eat.” He pulls out one chair with his foot and pushes me toward it, then sits in the one next to it. As soon as I’m seated he presses the cold barrel of the gun to my forehead. “If you do anything stupid I’ll blow her brains out. Understand?”
Mattie turns to Davis and looks him straight in the eyes. Her face looks awful in the beam of the flashlight—haggard and old—but she doesn’t look afraid. She looks pissed. “Yes, I understand,” she says. “I just need to get those matches on the table by your elbow.”
Davis switches the beam to the table to find the matches. As he looks away from Mattie she reaches behind her to the counter and slips something into her pocket. Another knife, I’m betting. Now she’s got two.
“What the fuck is this?”
For a second I think Davis has seen what Mattie did, but when I look at him I see he’s training the flashlight on a plastic figurine standing beside the matches on the kitchen table. It’s an Ewok with a Post-it note stuck to it.
“Oren left that there before,” I say, even though I am sure that it wasn’t there before. “He was playing a game.”
Davis rips the note off the Ewok and reads it aloud. “‘Don’t worry. The rebel alliance is on the way to help. May the Force be with you!’ ” He crumples the note up and throws it on the floor, his mouth twisted with disgust. “More of that Star Wars fantasy shit you’ve been encouraging him to believe. It’s time the boy grew up and learned the way the world really works. DO YOU HEAR THAT, OREN? THERE’S NO REBEL ALLIANCE ON THE WAY SO YOU MIGHT AS WELL COME OUT AND KEEP YOUR OLD MAN COMPANY.” He pauses, waiting for an answer, then tosses the matches at Mattie. “Get that stove going.”
Mattie catches the matches handily and turns toward the stove, but Davis barks, “Wait, light these lamps first so I can see what you’re doing over there.”
I can see by the slump in her shoulders that Mattie is disappointed. I bet she’d been counting on being able to work in the dark. But she comes back to the table and lights the three kerosene lamps that she’d put there earlier. They’re real old-fashioned lamps that cast a surprising amount of light. One’s a square hurricane lamp with metal reflectors that sends out a beam like a lighthouse.
“Take that one over to the stove,” Davis says, pointing at the hurricane lamp, “and put it on the top so I can see what you’re doing over there.”
Mattie gives Davis a look like he’s a simpleton but quickly washes that expression off her face. “I’m not sure it’s a good idea to leave kerosene on top of a lit woodstove,” she says tentatively. She’s treading carefully around Davis’s temper, as I have learned to do over the last two years, and though it makes me feel sick to watch her do it—and to realize how second nature it’s become to me—it works. Although a muscle twitches in Davis’s eye, he waves her away as if such details are beneath him.