The Sun Down Motel(99)

“Go get him,” I shouted at Nick. “Don’t let him go.”

He must have heard something in my voice that said I wasn’t helpless, because he swore and the next thing I heard were his boots taking off over the concrete, swift and hard.

I wondered if Nick would catch him. I wondered if Callum was armed. I wondered if Nick had his gun.

Fuck you, bitch, Callum said in my head.

“Fuck you, bitch,” I said back to him, my voice throaty as I still gasped for breath. I rolled onto my back and took stock.

I had a bump on the back of my head. My shoulder was screaming with pain, and when I rotated it, it made a sickening click sound that said it had been dislocated. I screamed through my gritted teeth, then took more breaths as the pain eased a little.

I had taken most of the impact on my back, and it throbbed from top to bottom. I moved gingerly, patting the leaves and garbage around me, looking for my glasses.

Feet shuffled in the dead leaves next to the pool, a few feet behind me.

I went still. At first I couldn’t see anything in the out-of-focus world around me; then I saw a smudge move from the corner of my eye, like someone shifting position.

“Nick?” I said.

There was no answer. I was cold, so cold. Trying to keep an eye on the blur, I felt for my glasses again.

A voice came, high and sad, almost faint. “I don’t feel good.”

My mouth went dry with fear. It sounded like a child—a boy. The boy I had seen. The boy who had hit his head in this pool and died.

I felt for my glasses again. They hadn’t fallen far. I ran my fingers over them. They were wobbly, but they weren’t broken. I picked them up and listened to them click as my hand shook.

“I don’t feel good,” the boy said again.

Slowly, I put my glasses on. I made myself turn around and look. He was standing at the far end of the pool, wearing shorts and a T-shirt. His arms and legs were thin and white in the darkness. He was looking at me.

“I—” I made myself speak. “I have to go.”

He started to walk toward me, the leaves rustling at his feet.

I sat up fast. I was bruised and filthy. When I moved a foot I heard a clink and knew there was broken glass in here somewhere. I tested with my palms before I put them down and pushed myself up, getting into a standing position as fast as I could as the pain moved through me.

The only way out of here was to climb the rusted old ladder that hung from the edge on the other end of the pool. I started toward it as the footsteps came behind me.

“Why don’t I feel good?” the boy asked, making me jump. But I moved one foot after the other, shuffling and limping, trying to gain speed, dirt and leaves on my clothes and in my hair. I likely looked like an extra in a zombie movie, but I kept moving. Slowly, too slowly, I climbed the incline from the deep end toward the shallow end and the ladder.

“I’m sorry,” I said as I walked. “I have to go. Maybe you’ll feel better soon.”

“Help me, please,” he said, still behind me, his footsteps still moving in the leaves.

“I can’t,” I said, my voice nearly a whisper of fear. “I really can’t.”

“Help me, please!”

The bolts on the ladder had nearly rusted to dust in the decades since the pool had last been used, and the ladder wobbled dangerously when I grabbed it. I swung my weight onto it and climbed out. Gritting my teeth in pain, I moved as fast as I could toward the break in the fence, but I couldn’t resist looking back over my shoulder.

The boy was standing at the bottom of the ladder, still watching me. I turned back and half ran toward the motel.

I could hear nothing from the direction Callum and Nick had run. No shouts, no gunshots. I felt in my pocket for my cell phone, then remembered I’d left it in my car because there was no service here. I needed to call the police.

My keys were in my coat pocket, and I fumbled them in the dark until I opened the office door. I flipped on the overhead light and walked around the desk. I picked up the desk phone.

Now is the moment when you realize someone has cut the phone line . . . someone who hasn’t left the motel.

“Shut up,” I croaked aloud to my overactive brain. “This isn’t a horror movie.” And it wasn’t. The dial tone came loud and healthy from the clunky old handset.

I dialed 911 and looked down at myself in the fluorescent light. I was streaked with dirt and old leaves, and there was a bloody scrape on my left wrist that I hadn’t even felt yet. My body begged me to sit in the office chair, as uncomfortable as it was, but I was afraid if I sat down I’d never manage to stand up again.

I told the 911 dispatcher what had happened: that I’d been followed, that I’d been assaulted and pushed into an empty pool by a man named Callum MacRae, that my friend Nick had taken off after my assailant. The dispatcher asked if I was injured, and I said, “Probably,” as pain ran up and down my spine. He asked if I could stay on the line as he sent police and an ambulance, and as he spoke the words I heard footsteps walking up the corridor toward the office.

The air went icy cold and I smelled pungent cigarette smoke.

“Miss Kirk?” the dispatcher said. “Are you still there?”

The footsteps came closer. Paced, measured. Not a soft tennis shoe or a woman’s high heel. A man.

I could see a plume of my own breath in the air.