Seeds of Fear

HIDEYHOLE Billie Sue Mosiman

At the entrance into the restaurant area, a girl dressed in skinny black jeans and matching black tank top waited for Bastine Rendeaux to open the door. She smiled, lips full and new as red smoky moons. He smiled back. "Eating alone?" he asked, feeling especially horny and turned on by how her breasts rounded the material of her shirt and how her hips swelled the jeans. "Want company?"

"Sure." She fell into place at his side as he went for a back booth.

She didn't say much. For a Lot Lizard, she sure didn't fit the stereotype. She was much too pretty, for one thing. All the curves were in the right places, her clothes were of good quality, and she wasn't too heavily made-up. She didn't look like any Lot Lizards he'd met before. This girl didn't need to waste herself on truck drivers.

"What's your name?" he asked, lighting her cigarette, fantasizing about taking it slowly from her sensuous lips and taking a puff, one puff, then placing it back in her lips.

"Shaw."

"Oh. Nice name. How'd you get a handle like that or is it a professional secret?"

"You could call it a secret if you want to."

She was intriguing, the type who liked to play games with him. All the dark sweaty games.

"You free tonight, Shaw? Want to keep a lonely trucker company?"

"I wouldn't mind spending some time with you." She blew out a cloud of blue smoke that he leaned over and inhaled as if it were exotic perfume. He closed his eyes as he did this, and when he opened them again, she displayed a mysterious smile playing around her satiny lips. "You like it different, don't you?" she asked.

"Not so much," he said. Blood thudded in his temples so hard, his vision blurred. To think he hadn't wanted to take this load of chemicals to Tallulah, Louisiana, for his dispatcher. What if he'd missed this opportunity? It made him sickly faint to consider it.

God. He had to get her outside now. He had to have her immediately. He'd explode if he didn't. He said in a voice gruff with lust, "Come with me."

Shaw shrugged and let him move her along to the glass exit door. Outside in the neon night of the truck parking lot she crooned his name. "Bastine. Bastine. Don't hurry so. We have all night, Bastine."

This only served to make him hustle her faster across the macadam to his idling truck. Diesel fumes filled the air. Noise from the dozens of truck engines created a thumping roar that echoed in his head. "I have to hurry," he said, unlocking the driver's door. "I'm so nuts for you, I can't wait."

Her laugh tinkled around his head like silver dimes falling onto a metal counter. Bastine climbed down again and lifted Shaw onto the first step to the open cab. "C'mon, baby, I'm serious now. You can't keep a guy like me waiting. I might get dangerous."

By the time Bastine entered the cab with her, he saw she had pulled the tank top over her head, the sunglasses tumbling behind her. He caught his breath. She was fleecy white as a sheet washed until it is see-through-thin, even her nipples hardly discernible because they were soft pink and small. She wasn't scared, she wasn't the least bit anxious.

"How you want to do it?" she asked.

"Any old way is fine with me, girl. Just anything at all." He fumbled, unbuckling his belt and stripping off the faded Lee jeans into a heap that he had to fight off his feet. His organ tapped at his belly when he leaned way over to push the clothes into the front of the cab. He almost laughed, giddy with excitement.

"Whatever you want, sweetcakes. I've been waiting a long time for it, Bastine. I won't give you any trouble."

Bastine mulled over her confession and found it tasted of the truth. "Want to tell me what this is gonna cost me?"

"Nothing. Absolutely nothing."

But Bastine didn't believe that. He knew the lay of the land, and in that land nothing came free, not life or pretty women either. He'd settle with her later. If she squawked on her pay, that was her own damn fault for not getting the matter over with in the beginning.

All thought of money fled once he was completely nude and had climbed into the sleeper with her. It smelled like old socks and dirty sheets and nights of unfulfilled passion back there, but he didn't want to think about that. The one small reading light above and to the left of them inset into the cab gleamed down onto her marble flesh. She looked as bright to him as a sunny beach resort billboard caught in the glare of headlights.

He kneeled between her upraised knees. His hands clenched and unclenched. To mold and manipulate that perfect skin. That's what drove through his mind. To make her want him as much as he wanted her. To make her cry out and plead with him never to stop, never to release her.

"Go ahead," she whispered. "Don't hold back. Don't think about it. Make love to me, I want it, Bastine, I've saved myself for it, I really have."

He didn't know what she meant. She was not a «saved» kind of woman. Not a virgin by any means. Not inexperienced.

Suddenly he lowered himself and the warmth of her thighs embraced his hips like clamps and then fury came, possessing him, robbing him of all sense. She wept silently in climax, and then again, her tears rolling past tightly closed black lashes. She begged, but not for him to stop. She prayed for more, More, Bastine, until exhausted, he fell across her sweat-drenched body. She cursed and said, "You're not done, I'm not finished, I require this just once more, you can try. Once more."

"I'm sorry," he said, panting and trying to still his breath.

"Use your hand," she whispered into his ear. "You must do it. With. Your. Hand."

Bastine roused himself throughout the night to take her brutally and then fell dead each time into mindless sleep, something akin to unconsciousness. Each time he woke to her proddings and began again until morning came when they both collapsed into sleep as still as corpses in the dark coffin of the sleeper.

The next morning Bastine, more fatigued than ever before in his life, eyes gritty as ground glass, body weak and bruised-feeling, wanted only to be rid of Shaw. She might protest. She had been special, they both knew that, but this was the part he truly loved the most, his leaving. He planned to unhitch his load and drive into Tallulah for a movie.

"Shaw, baby, what do I owe you?" He was dressed and had his wallet out. Shaw still lay in the bunk, naked, glowing, sleepy-eyed.

"I told you. Nothing. My treat."

Man, she must have really liked it. "Fine. Then how 'bout I buy you breakfast before you go."

"Hmmmmm." She stretched and sat up, her breasts bobbing like frosted apples. There were blue marks that tracked her arms where he'd held her down. He was sorry about that. "Where am I going?"

Bastine turned slowly in the truck seat. "Well. uh.. wherever you go to, I guess. Home. On down the road. Wherever."

"I'm not going anywhere." She gave him the smile, the one that had so fascinated him when they first met.

"But you have to."

"Why?"

"Well, I sure as hell can't take you with me. I drive all the time. I don't even have a house! I live in this truck. I can't take you with me." She had him repeating himself. It wasn't like she was stupid. What was wrong with her thinking he'd want her along permanently? That wasn't in the game plan. He hated explaining these things to women. She didn't seem bothered that he wanted her gone because she wasn't going. This wasn't how it was played.

"I'm yours now, Bastine. I belong to you. The thing is, it's always been meant for us to be together."

"Hey, wait a minute, wait one goddamn minute. What kind of horseshit is this? I don't own nobody. I don't want to own nobody. You don't belong to me, okay? I'm perfectly willing to give you a couple hundred to help you out, but no way do you go with me. I don't have meaningful relationships and all that silly yuppie shit. This was just a one-night stand, you understand? Shaw?"

She was dressing, pretending to ignore him.

"Shaw? Did you hear what I said? You can't go."

"I can't go, you can't go," she said conversationally. She pulled on black suede slippers and crawled into the passenger seat. She looked at him and there wasn't a trace of humor on her face now. "I'm yours, Bastine. I'm yours forever."

Bastine mumbled, "I can't talk to the bitch," and flung open the cab door. He jumped down to the pavement and stalked to the cafe for breakfast. He'd deal with her later when he had a full stomach and four aspirin for the headache she'd caused to bloom over his temples. Crazy woman. Forever? Nothing was forever, and if she was old enough, she'd know that. His sexual unions — for that is what they were — never turned out this way. They cried sometimes and they begged, but they never acted so cool and in control this way.

When he came back after eating and brushing his teeth in the men's room, he found Shaw sitting right where he'd left her in the passenger seat of his truck. He took a deep breath and got into the driver's seat. "This ain't gonna work," he warned. "I don't want you along, you got that? I didn't sign up for a lifetime of crap from some woman. I didn't put a ring on your finger and waltz you to the church. Now, you're gonna have to get out of my truck or I'll call the cops. You know how long they stuff you in jail for prostitution in a truck stop? You got any fucking idea how much trouble you're gonna be in?"

"You do that and I'll have to hurt you, Bastine."

He laughed and it wasn't even funny. He lowered his voice. "You don't want to threaten me, kid. I'm a mean son of a bitch when I want to be. You oughta know that already. Look at your arms! Look what I already done to you."

Shaw lifted a small handgun from her lap and pointed it at him. "I go with you or you don't go."

"Jesus H. Harrowing Christ. What do you think you're gonna do with that peashooter? Don't make me laugh." Though he talked tough, Bastine felt his insides quaking and his breakfast wanted up and out. If she shot him, he might live through the gunshot wound, but he'd die on the spot of a heart attack. Guns scared hell out of him. He had a brief crazy urge to leap through the truck window.

Shaw leaned over the console and pressed the barrel end of the gun against his thigh. "Bastine? You believe me, don't you? I don't want to hurt you, but I will, I swear I will."

Bastine sucked air over his teeth and let it out slowly. "Okay, okay. I'm laid up here the weekend. I dump this load Monday in Tallulah. We'll talk this over until then."

"Good," she said, removing the pistol and slipping it into a small black purse. "Now, how would you like to go inside the truck stop with me so I can eat my breakfast."

Bastine nodded. The whole bizarre incident was clicking fast into place in his mind. The girl who called herself Shaw was a psychopath, unlike himself, who he considered, in contemplative moods, as nothing more than a little warped out of the normal pattern. Shaw was the real thing. She was the walking, talking embodiment of Loony Tunes.

She slept most of the day while he read a Louis L'Amour western. They ate a spare dinner, he picking at his food, she nibbling at a chicken salad sandwich.

"Why are you so quiet, Bastine? Don't you like me anymore? I don't want this silence between us."

"Tell me, Shaw, what this is all about, can you? I mean, I'm not a prize or anything. I make lousy money. I live on the road. Why me?"

Shaw leaned her head to the side to study him. "I'll tell you later. As a surprise. It'll be lovely."

"Is it the sex? I mean, hell, lots of guys will give it to you rough, if that's it. You'd be surprised how many guys will do what you want. You're a damn pretty girl." Maybe a little flattery would get him off the hook.

She simply smiled her mysterious smile and returned to her sandwich.

Bastine hung his head, thoughts black, the anger coming from nowhere to press against the tight, hot band of his skull. "Let's go to bed," he said, standing with the meal ticket, taking out his wallet to pay the bill.

Shaw slipped on the sunglasses. She took his arm and he let her, though he felt like breaking her fingers one at a time.

Hours later, orgasms later, Bastine hovered above Shaw's sweat-slathered body. "You know I don't want you," he said. "You know you can't stay with me."

She moaned and pulled him down onto her breasts, holding him tightly in her arms. She moved her hips until his limp organ swirled inside her, then began to harden. Again.

"Oh, Bastine, you're like a wild beast. I always knew you were. I saw it in you even when you were young.."

Her words turned Bastine to granite. He felt a shock travel down through his arms into his frozen hands. "What are you talking about? Who are you? What's your name?" With each question his voice rose until he was shouting. "Who are you?"

Shaw rolled from beneath him and drew the crumpled sheet between her breasts. She gnawed on the tip of the sheet, her eyes like coals in the dark. "I should tell you the secret now, yes, Bastine, it's time."

"What the hell is this all about? Where did you come from?"

"I'm from here, from the same parish as you. I grew up not far from your house. Remember the old Clancine place? I was Sandy then, Sandy Clancine. I went to school with you. But I was younger… oh, I was so young and I was always trying to catch up with you, Bastine."

He sank back on the mattress, pressed his hands together in his lap. She was someone from his past. He hazily remembered the Clancine family. They lived as poorly as he, half a dozen kids running around barefoot in rags. He hated Louisiana. He should have known nothing good could come from it.

She continued in a dreamy, detached voice. "I used to sneak out to your place and watch your daddy. He hurt you bad, I saw him. And your mama, she was almost as terrible. That time. that time she helped your daddy with the rope in the backyard… I saw that, Bastine. I prayed for you, that they'd let you down before you strangled. I would have attacked them if they hadn't let go of the rope. But I was so little. When I was ten you were already in your teens. But I knew all the secrets of everyone in the parish. I spent all my time hiding out so I could learn every thing I could. Especially about you."

"What else did you see?" Bastine covered his face with his hands to keep the memories from flooding his head. Already the sleeper smelled of the outhouse to him, the air scented with a miasma of dirty, rotten things.

She rolled onto her back and reached out to touch his arm. "I saw you take out your hate on the animals, the wild things. How you went hunting, but you maimed things, then slowly killed them. I saw you turn on your brothers and devise new tortures for them. I saw you with. girls. When you started dating, I would follow you out on the dirt paths into the forests, and I saw how you talked them into things, how sometimes it got out of hand, and you had them scared of you. I saw how you mastered them, how you controlled them.

"I wanted to be those girls, Bastine. I wanted to be your one girl. I had to wait until I was old enough to attract you, but you left. That day you packed your things and fled the parish, I cried for a week. My folks couldn't do anything with me. I stopped going to school. I started thinking about you day and night. I knew we belonged together."

"So our meeting wasn't accidental?"

She shook her head. "I've been coming to this truck stop every night or so for a long, long time, Bastine. I knew what company you worked for. I've been waiting. All this time."

Understanding made Bastine raise his face from his hands. "You brought the gun because you knew I'd try to make you leave."

"Yes. I didn't want to, but I couldn't take a chance of losing you again. You understand, don't you, Bastine? You forgive me, don't you? You may punish me if you want. I know I haven't any rights..»

"I don't know about this, Shaw. I… no one's ever… all that stuff that happened when I was a kid.»

"Shh." She reached up and touched his lips with her own. "Take me with you, Bastine. Don't make me go away. I'll die if you do. Please. I've waited so long, all my life."

Bastine wanted to punish her for insinuating herself into his life, and at the same time he wanted to hold on to her to keep her from leaving again. He'd never had anything of his own except the truck. "Let me think," he said. "I can't promise."

She brought his left palm to her face and pressed it against her lips. "You can't live without me any more than I can live without you. We belong together."

He cradled her in his arms and tried to imagine the future. There would be a thousand secrets they could share, a thousand nights they could make electrifying.

On Sunday he and Shaw spent most of their time together reminiscing. The lengths she had gone to in order to shadow him as he grew up in the parish were beyond anything he thought possible. That's when she'd changed her name, she told him, using "Shaw," the shortened form of the word "shadow."

Near sunset Shaw leaned forward and peered out the windshield. "See that girl?"

Bastine stared. It was a Lot Lizard crossing the back lot. She was scanning the cabs, waiting for a signal of headlights to indicate the offer of a job. "Sure, I see her. Disease carrier."

"Oh, you're a cruel man. They're not all so bad. I even did it now and then to keep body and soul together while I waited for you to come through. I know these girls. And I have an idea for tonight if you're willing."

"Yeah? Like what?" Just the thought of a new sexual game made the blood rise to his head.

"Let's take her to your old place."

"What?"

"Let's offer her some money and drive her out to the swamp. We can have some fun and we can kill some ghosts at the same time. You do feel the ghosts out there, don't you? We shouldn't leave here and take them with us. It'll spoil our future together."

Bastine shivered where he sat. "I don't wanna talk about that. I don't think about. them… if I can help it."

"But you could go back if I was with you, couldn't you? It would be fun, Bastine. We'll play with the girl. Chase her. There's so many places there she can get lost and so many places I know where to hide. It would be terrifying!"

Bastine considered the proposition. Ever since he'd walked into the truck stop his entire life had taken a decided tilt. He felt he was moving on a conveyor belt on a slight angle up to the top floor of a malevolent fun house. What Shaw proposed scared him, but at the same time it thrilled him to imagine the things they could do. And he did need to slay, for all time, the lingering, tormenting visages of his mother and his father.

"She looks sweet and vulnerable," Shaw said. "We'd better hurry."

Yes, he thought. Yes, yes, oh Christ, things were different now. He could have Shaw and the girl too, he could make them his slaves for the night, send them with torches to light the forest like nymphs dispatched by a god. They could be his audience while he spent his rage on the land that stole half his life.

"Yes," he said, climbing from the cab. "I'll get her. Wait here."

"I'll pay extra because it'll be a threesome," Bastine told the girl, holding her around the waist as he walked her to his truck. She was slim with small breasts, short bleached hair, a dimple in her chin. She made him think of a cured ham, plain, bony, but sturdy, enough meat for a meal.

"I don't mind anything if there's enough money," she said. Her voice was high and piping, the trill of a monkey. An annoying sound that Bastine immediately decided to tune out as soon as he had the preliminaries completed. Let Shaw talk to her.

"And you don't mind we drive out to my old home place, huh? It's not far. We'll have room there. Can't move around much, not three of us, in my goddamn sleeper."

She laughed easily enough. "Naw, I don't mind. We don't wanna crowd each other, hon."

Shaw had moved into the sleeper and let the girl take the passenger seat. Bastine unhitched his load and slid the rig from beneath it. He bobtailed it out of the truck stop while the girl, who called herself Dory, babbled in her tinny voice to Shaw. He wished he could erase her dimple. And he had to silence that noise coming out of her mouth.

He had not forgotten the dirt and mud back roads that led to the old house. He'd dreamed of it often enough since he'd left.

When he pulled into the bare ground of the front yard, mud clung to the rig's wheels and coated the mud flaps. The headlights outlined the leaning porch, the grimy windows where curtains had never hung.

"Bitch of a place," Dory said. "Creepy."

"Let's go check it out." Shaw pressed the girl through the door and crawled out behind her.

Bastine picked up his flashlight and turned off the motor. He couldn't stop shaking. They were plunged into darkness unrelieved by starlight. Bare trees hung with Spanish moss circled the yard like hairy skeletons, and above their heads the sky was black as the oil in his truck's crankcase.

He heard Shaw calling him and swung the light toward her. "I'm not sure this was such a great idea," he said. A burning tenseness bunched the muscles of his neck as if to ward off a blow from behind. He fiercely controlled the idiotic urge to turn and check for an assailant. He made sure Dory stood next to Shaw. He must keep them in sight at all times. That's what he had to do when he was at home. Keep them in sight. Never let them get the advantage. They were always sneaking up and surprising him, grabbing his collar and hauling him off his feet, the willow switch swinging in that blurred arc to sprinkle his back and legs with furious sparks of pain.

"It's going to be all right," Shaw said. She gestured toward him, pulling him forward with invisible strings. "It's going to be fun, Bastine. Remember? We can kill the fear. We can murder it here where it was born."

"What's that mean?" Dory's high-pitched voice rose another register. "What's wrong with him anyway? Why's he acting so funny?"

"You just do as you're told." Shaw's harsh retort shut the girl up. "This is our night and you do what we want you to do, you got that?"

"Sure. Whatever you say."

Bastine lifted the light beam to the porch steps. He watched the two girls climb them, testing each riser before treading on the next. The creaks were loud and grating.

Creaks. His father approaching. When he was hiding in the cubbyhole beneath the kitchen sink. He could hear him, feel his imminent presence through the bare floorboards. There was always something he had done or hadn't done, something he'd forgotten or something he'd ruined, for which he was to be punished. Holding his breath didn't work. Begging for mercy made it last longer. Nothing saved him, ever.

"Come, Bastine. Come with us inside."

He settled the light beam on Shaw's face and did not recognize her for several seconds. She was fiercely ugly. Her face was all stark planes and protruding knobs.

"Come, Bastine. Don't be afraid."

Oh, that's what they always said, the motherfuckers, the cocksucking bastards. Don't be afraid, we won't hurt you, we just want to talk to you, Daddy's not going to use his belt, Mama's not mad at you, you didn't do anything wrong, Bastine. They lied!

"Liar," he whispered.

"No, Bastine. Don't get upset. Come inside first. We have Dory with us, remember? Dory, go get him. Take his hand."

"I'm not sure. uh.»

"Do it!"

The girl skipped down the steps and grabbed for Bastine's free hand. She turned to pull him up the steps. He resisted. She tugged, grunting.

Bastine finally relented and let himself be led up the steps that creaked, across the porch boards that threw him off balance, and to the door where Shaw ran a soothing hand down his chest to cup his crotch. "Soon, Bastine. Inside. Push the door open for us."

Bastine turned his shoulder in to it and the door gave with a sharp crack, then stuck. He had to push again, wood scraping wood as they walked single file into the big dusty room.

Though it was empty except for beer bottles and trash left over from squatters, Bastine watched for someone to slither from the darkness. Every time he swung the light, the dark followed and swallowed the area again. They could be there. Dead or not, they could certainly still be waiting and watching just as always. He hadn't any evidence that they couldn't. Or they could be through the doorway, hiding in the kitchen. Or in the pantry there. Or in the hall closet. Or in one of the two bedrooms. They could even be in the room with the tub, hiding in it. They had to be somewhere because he felt them.

"You're shaking, sugar," Dory said, taking his hand again. "Maybe we should go back to the truck. There's a mattress there and there ain't nothing here. This is one spooky trip."

"Shut up," Shaw said. "We want to do it here. In this house. You'll just have to accept that."

"It's pretty dirty. There might be snakes.»

Bastine couldn't take the banging pain of her voice any longer. He reached out reflexively with the flash light and smashed her in the mouth. Oh God, he hadn't meant… he really didn't mean. She screamed and that anchored him to the present long enough to know what he had done.

"Easy, baby," Shaw said. "Go slow now. We want a long night, don't we?"

Dory was on her knees, hands to face, blood drip ping onto the floor. She was moaning and swaying. Bastine leaned down and laid his hand on her hair like a benediction. "I didn't mean it."

He told his mama and daddy that so often, it was a litany he repeated silently in his mind sometimes for days on end. I didn't mean it. I didn't mean it. I won't do it again. I didn't mean it.

Dory spluttered through her torn mouth, "You hith me, you prickth. You hurth me bad!" She was crying now, loudly, and spitting rusty sputum on the floor.

"Shut up," Shaw said. "Come on, Bastine, let's look through the rest of the rooms while Dory takes care of herself. Stay put," she said to the girl.

Bastine followed docilely behind, the light moving just ahead of Shaw's feet, now and then coming up to outline a doorway, a cabinet with a hanging door, a sink with rust stains, a bedspring sitting alone in the center of a bedroom. Dust filled his nostrils and made his throat feel raw. He kept jumping at the screech of rats that clawed and raced across the floor. Far off, he heard bits and pieces of what Shaw said to him during the tour.

". saw you through that window at night.. there's the door to the back… the stove's still here. the flue in the fireplace is probably full of bird nests… got to kill off the past… get rid of it for good. if you murder her, then maybe.. I thought you needed that gift… that release…"

Was she… could she be talking about murder? Crossing the line. Killing the Lot Lizard. She couldn't possibly mean it.

"I can't do it," Bastine murmured. "I don't want to do that." They stood close together at the window of the bedroom. The flashlight glinted from the black pane, a spear of yellow radiance.

"But you must."

"No," he said. "I can't go that far."

Shaw moved closer to him. "Then I'll do it," she said. "For you. I want to. I've always dreamed of taking revenge on your behalf, Bastine."

"Should we?" he asked. "Can we? But I can't, I said that. It wouldn't be right." He followed her to the open living room. He moved the light around looking for Dory. She was gone.

"She's hiding," he said. "She's scared too."

"Like you were. Like I was for you."

"We ought to let her go. We have to leave here. Now."

"I can find her. I know all the secret hiding places."

Bastine knew them too, but they never saved him. Nothing ever, by God, saved him. He was as shriveled inside as he had been as a kid in this house. Why had he thought he'd be excited and could enjoy some nutty sexual escapade of this magnitude? It was a terrible mistake, maybe the worst one he'd ever made. Shaw was stimulating that dead part of him and making it walk. But she could not make it kill; she could not make it free, either.

While standing, considering his options, he had not noticed Shaw's disappearance. He moved through the house, trembling uncontrollably, calling for her. "Shaw? Please come out. Don't leave me here alone like this."

He searched for them. The cubbyhole under the sink was empty. The closets smelled of mildew and old coats soaked with body odor. He left the house, skirted the porch, looked in the mud holes beneath it. It looked as if dogs had wallowed there.

"Shaw? Dory? Let's go now. I don't want to stay any longer. I hate it here!"

He heard the rasp of crickets and throaty bullfrogs that leaped and slapped standing water. He heard a breeze ruffle through the silver moss. "Oh shit," he mumbled. "Y'all come on back here."

He circled the house and headed down the worn path to the outhouse. The door was missing. He glanced inside, but couldn't bring himself to go near the hole in the boards or to gaze into the old pit there. He pushed aside brambles and searched behind the outhouse. He was coming around again to the back porch to check an old refrigerator lying on its back when he heard a gunshot shatter the still night. He halted. Let a whimper escape his lips. He'd forgotten about Shaw's gun. He expected to see her any moment come dragging the body of Dory from the woods. He waited, holding his breath. Dew soaked into his shirt and chilled him. He tried calling again, but couldn't speak above a whisper. A fearful idea took possession of his fevered brain. What if it wasn't Shaw? What if Dory possessed the gun?

What if Dory now stalked him and he was to be her next victim? He was the one who hit her, wasn't he? She might think he sent Shaw after her.

He must hide. He had done something dreadfully wrong this time. He was involved in a death dance.

He dropped the flashlight in his terror and scrambled up the back steps. The middle step gave way and sent him sprawling onto his knees. His pants tore, his knee bled. He went up the next step on hands and knees, splinters lodging painfully, pulled himself up with the help of the rail, and lunged toward the back door. The hinges gave and the door fell inward as he turned the doorknob. The crash made him scream, his legs wobble. He stumbled over the door and looked wildly around, the darkness impenetrable. Where? Had to find a hideyhole. Where?

He got down on the floor and tried to squeeze into the space under the sink, his favorite childhood cubbyhole, and found he was too large to fit. He had to hold back hysterical laughter welling up at the sight he must make with his ass sticking high in the air and his head lodged next to the drainpipe. He wasn't little anymore. He couldn't fit, he had so few places left for hiding.

He backed out, could now see gray shapes in the black. The doorway. He could find a closet. Or lie down in the old claw-foot tub. He'd seen it was a place where someone had defecated, but that didn't matter. He'd lie in shit if he must. Would the girl look in there? No, no, no, she'd never find him there.

He came to his feet and felt his way through the door to the living room, kicked trash out of his way, gaze skittering to the windows, and the front door that stood open to the night. He felt along the wall, the wallpaper peeling, the grit of old dried glue beneath his fingertips. He found the hallway and crept toward the bathroom.

His father hauled the tub from a junkyard and they filled it with water heated on the stove when they bathed, then he had the job of carrying out the dirty water bucketful by bucketful. His father made the bath by sealing off one end of the hall and installing a door. It was a stupid thing to do, but now it might afford Bastine sanctuary. It must.

He turned his back, slid into the tub, lowered himself the way he might have had it been full of warm water. He felt the hard crusts of someone's feces under his hips and grimaced. He slid farther down, knees up and to the side, hands crossed on his chest. The cold porcelain cooled his skin through his clothes and then seeped into his muscles. He bit down on his tongue until he drew blood to keep from whispering that he didn't mean it, he didn't mean it, wasn't anyone, goddamnit, listening to him?

He stared across the rolled white rim of the tub at the door. He willed it to stay closed.

He heard the creaking boards of the front steps first. His heart trip-hammered him half to death. He shut his eyes so tight, tears were squeezed from the edges. His fingers clutched at one another, nails tearing at the skin of his knuckles.

If he were on the road, the cities flying past, the miles rolling behind him, he'd be safe. If he hadn't been dispatched to Tallulah where Shaw waited for him, he would never be here after all these years. If he weren't so goddamned fucked-up, he'd never have left the truck stop.

Oh God, oh God, let it be Shaw, he prayed. Let her find me and take me away from here, please God. She is by far the cruelest of the two of us. Punish her.

The doorknob slowly rotated. Bastine's eyes stretched wide open. His breath caught in his throat where he swallowed it.

I didn't mean it.

The door opened without a sound, swinging back by increments.

Don't hurt me. I don't like being hurt. Daddy, please.

He could see her now in the doorway, but who was she? Mama? Shaw? Dory? He tried to find his voice, failed.

Her dark shape came toward him, arms hanging at her sides.

I'm hiding, she can't see me, no one can see me.

His legs twitched, his fingers tightened, his teeth closed harder on his tongue until they touched and blood filled his mouth. He must breathe. He must cry out for mercy as he had always been forced to do.

The right arm of the shape came up and he saw something in it. The barrel of the gun pointed at his chest. His vision narrowed into a tunnel that drew him into the cylinder. It was death he faced, that one true monster he had always feared and managed to outrun. He gagged on his own blood, jerked forward, hands coming up to stop the inevitable.

"Shaw!"

The gun blast lit the room and Bastine fell back against the tub as if a sledgehammer had been swung by a giant arm, slamming him in the chest.

"I'm no fuckith thaw." Dory wiped the back of her hand across her split lips and broken teeth.

Bastine tried to rise again, to push away from the cold porcelain of the tub, but his arms would not obey him, and now he felt it. The zone of pain began in his right side and spread out a carpet of fire forward to encompass all the ribs on that side and to the back. It felt like someone with a burning razor ran through his lungs, hacking, hacking.

"What have you done?" he murmured. "Why have you done this?"

"You busth my teef! You and your girfren tried to kill me!"

But no, he wanted to say and couldn't, thought he said and didn't. But no, it wasn't me, it was Shaw, it was her, and she's crazy as hell, don't you see, couldn't you tell, couldn't you just help me now because I'm dying here, I'm dying now, this is no game, girl, that gun's no toy, this was the worst idea, the all-time worst thing ever happened that shouldn't have, but if you'll take my hand, I'll..

His thoughts ran down like a weak truck battery without enough juice to start the engine, and he knew finally that she hadn't heard his pleas. She was gone, the doorway empty, the door swinging lazily on its hinges, quietly now shutting by itself, sealing him in the little old room in the little old house that had never once afforded a proper sanctuary for victims who meant to hide away.