Off Season - Jack Ketchum [41]
She was still looking upward when the knife descended and then moved up again, burned over her clitoris, and moved slowly and carefully over her belly, between her breasts and finally, to her neck, where it slashed with a neat butcher’s skill the anterior jugular and, moments later, ended her.
The pail began to fill. The children lit the fire. The thin man moved closer, peering down over her body. In a slow, deliberate motion he reached into the chest and touched the heart. It was still warm, still beating. He severed the veins and arteries with the knife and lifted the muscle into the light, and still it beat, steaming in the cool air. For the man this moment was the nexus of all mystery and wonder, the closest thing he knew to worship. He stared until finally the heart was still. His eyes, usually dull, filled with a fine cool light. He bit deep into its naked fiber and grunted his approval.
“I’ve looked everywhere,” said Nick. “It’s not here.” Dan was kneeling on the floor, knocking the legs off the chairs in the kitchen. The seats would work well over the windows. He looked up at Nick and saw the fear and frustration grinding at him. That man is about to cry, he thought.
“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “If we know where it isn’t then we know where it is. In the trunk. We’ll find a way to get it out of there. Meantime, boil some water. All you can make.”
“Huh?”
Dan smiled coldly. “Ever scald yourself with hot water?”
In a moment Nick smiled, too. “I can go you one better,” he said. “There’s butter in the refrigerator. About two pounds, I think.”
“Great. Do that up too.”
He opened the potbellied stove and piled the broken chair legs inside. He left the grate open so he could see when they began to burn. With the varnish on them it shouldn’t take long. Then he’d heat the poker. There were six chairs, one for each remaining window with the exception of the big one in the kitchen. He went to work on the last of them while Nick put a match to each of the burners on the stove. Nick filled three pans with water and a fourth with the butter from the refrigerator. He opened one of the cabinets and found a bottle of vegetable oil, nearly full, and emptied that in with the butter. Then he threw the burners up to high and waited.
“Get that other door off,” Dan said to him.
Laura sat huddled behind the door. She gave a start when Nick walked in. “I’ve got to take this,” he said. She made no response. Where in hell is she gone to? he wondered. Her eyes looked cold and dead. Her breath came in shallow gasps. God, he thought, I don’t even feel sorry for her.
He recalled his last image of Carla, dangling by a rope from the tree. Since then he had not dared to look. He did not want to know she was dead. That would hurt, he thought. That would hurt a lot. He felt a rush of anger. I’m so goddamned worried about my own skin . . . , he thought, and left the thought unfinished. He used the hammer to slam the door free of its hinges. Laura started again and folded her arms over her breasts.
“Bring it out here,” Dan said. “Hurry.”
Nick turned to Laura. “You’ll be all right,” he said. “I promise.” She stared at him and said nothing. He picked up the door.
As he passed Marjie’s room he saw her standing in the doorway, stark naked, watching Dan nail the seat of a chair over the far kitchen window. He smelled the acrid scent of vomit behind her. She seemed hardly to notice him.
For a moment everything seemed utterly unreal—this woman who had been his friend and secretly even more perhaps, standing pale and naked before him; while behind him Laura sat trembling in a corner and somewhere to his right a man he hardly knew lay dead and bloodless on his bed; while outside on a hill a group of maniacs