Just After Sunset

“Fifteen minutes at most.”

Yes. Probably. Then Pickering would come back and rape her, as he had been pla

Fifteen minutes. Maybe just ten.

She looked down at her feet. They weren’t duct-taped to the floor, but the feet of the chair were. Still…

You’re a ru

They were good legs, all right, and she didn’t need anyone to kiss them to make her aware of it. Especially not a lunatic like Pickering. She didn’t know if they were good in the sense of being beautiful, or sexy, but in utilitarian terms, they were very good. They had carried her a long way since the morning she and Henry had found Amy dead in her crib. Pickering clearly had great faith in the powers of duct tape, had probably seen it employed by dozens of psycho killers in dozens of movies, and none of his “nieces” had given him any cause to doubt its efficacy. Maybe because he hadn’t given them a chance, maybe because they were too frightened. But maybe…especially on a wet day, in an unaired house so damp she could smell the mildew…

Em leaned forward as far as the corsets binding her would allow and gradually began to flex the muscles of her thighs and calves: those new ru

She relaxed, breathing hard, sweat now breaking on her forehead, under her arms, between her breasts. She wanted to go again at once, but her experience ru

She tried to remain still until she had counted to thirty (with a delightful Maisie after each number), and could only hold out to seventeen. Then she flexed again, pushing down with all her might. This time the sucking sound was immediate and louder. She felt the chair begin to lift. Just a little, but it was definitely rising.

Em strained, her head thrown back, her teeth bared, fresh blood ru

Hot pain bloomed suddenly in her right calf, tightening it. For a moment Em almost kept on straining-the stakes were high, after all, the stakes were her life-but then she relaxed within her bonds again, gasping for air. And counting.

“One, delightful Maisie. Two, delightful Maisie. Three…”

Because she could probably pull the chair free of the floor in spite of that warning tightness. She was almost sure she could. But if she did so at the expense of a charley horse in her right calf (she’d had them there before; on a couple of occasions they’d hit so hard the muscle had felt like stone rather than flesh), she would lose more time than she gained. And she’d still be bound to the fucking chair. Glued to the fucking chair.

She knew the clock on the wall was dead, but she looked at it anyway. It was a reflex. Still 9:15. Was he at the drawbridge yet? She had a sudden wild hope: Deke would blow the warning horn and scare him off. Could a thing like that happen? She thought it could. She thought Pickering was like a hyena, only dangerous when he was sure he had the upper hand. And, probably like a hyena, wasn’t able to imagine not having it.

She listened. She heard thunder, and steadily whooshing rain, but not the blare of the air horn mounted beside the drawbridge keeper’s cabin.

She tried pulling the chair off the floor again, and almost went catapulting facefirst into the stove when it came free almost at once. She staggered, tottered, almost fell over, and backed against the Formica-topped service island in the middle of the kitchen to keep from doing so. Her heart was now ru

I’m all right, she thought. It didn’t happen.

No. But she could see herself lying there all the same, and with hellish clarity. Lying there with only the swash of blood made by Nicole’s hair for company. Lying there and waiting for Pickering to come back and have his fun with her before ending her life. And he would be back when? In seven minutes? Five? Only three?

She looked at the clock. It was 9:15.

She hunched beside the counter, gasping for breath, a woman who had grown a chair out of her back. There was the butcher knife on the counter, but she couldn’t reach it with her hands bound to the chair’s arms. Even if she could have grasped it, what then? Just stand there, hunched over, with it in her hand. There was nothing she could reach with it, nothing she could cut with it.

She looked at the stove, and wondered if she could turn on one of the burners. If she could do that, then maybe…

Another hellish vision came to her: trying to burn through the tape and having her clothes catch on fire from the gas ring instead. She wouldn’t risk it. If someone had offered her pills (or even a bullet in the head) to escape the possibility of rape, torture, and death-likely a slow one, preceded by unspeakable mutilations-she might have overcome the dissenting voice of her father (“Never give up, Emmy, good things are always just around some corner or other”) and gone for it. But risking the possibility of third-degree burns all over the upper half of her body? Lying half-baked on the floor, waiting for Pickering to come back, praying for him to come back and put her out of her misery?

No. She wouldn’t do that. But what did that leave? She could feel time fleeting, fleeting. The clock on the wall still said 9:15, but she thought the beat of the rain had slacked off a bit. The idea filled her with horror. She pushed it back. Panic would get her killed.

The knife was a can’t and the stove was a won’t. What did that leave?

The answer was obvious. It left the chair. There weren’t any others in the kitchen, only three high stools like barstools. She guessed he must have imported this one from a dining room she hoped never to see. Had he bound other women-other “nieces”-to heavy red maple chairs that belonged around a dining-room table? Maybe to this very one? In her heart she was sure he had. And he trusted it even though it was wood instead of metal. What had worked once must work again; she was sure he thought like a hyena in that way, too.

She had to demolish the prison that held her. It was the only way, and she had only minutes to do it.