The Darkest Lullaby Read online

  He drew away, face stamped with surprise. “No underwear?”

  “That a problem?” she asked and kissed the side of his mouth. His face moved with hers and then their tongues were together, tasting, mouths open and hungry. She reached down, unbuttoned his jeans, drew down the zipper. Her fingers dipped inside his boxer briefs and closed over his penis.

  They made love.

  After a time, she slowly slumped forward and lay against him, her chest against the side of his panting face. Runnels of sweat slid down his temples, mingled with hers.

  “Thank you,” he said as his breathing slowed.

  “I’m the lucky one.”

  “That was…”

  “Amazing?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Against her skin, she felt his face spread into a smile.

  They ate dinner and Chris drank wine. They made love again before showering together and returning to bed, where Chris surprised her by going down on her and making love to her a third time.

  When they’d finished, Ellie slipped into her favorite nightshirt, a navy blue one that had once been his. Lying beside him in the dark, breathing in the soapy scent of his skin, she said, “When do you think we’ll renovate this place?”

  “Big job.”

  “We could do it in stages.”

  “How about a brand new house?”

  She regarded the silhouette of his face. “You mean tear down this one?”

  He shrugged. “Maybe.”

  “But to build a new house…”

  “There’s a site deeper in the forest.”

  She propped herself on an elbow. “You serious?”

  “You should see it.”

  “Go on.”

  “Think of a giant oval meadow,” he said.

  “Okay,” she said and lay back.

  “On the western end of the oval about fifty yards from the woods there’s a ridge.”

  Ellie pictured it, her mind painting the scene at sunset.

  “The house will face west. We’ll still have a covered porch, only it won’t be warped and rickety.”

  “Shucks.”

  “Behind the house, where the ground slopes, there’ll be a walkout basement, a big deck for entertaining.”

  Ellie waited, a warm mist of goose bumps electrifying her skin.

  “There’s an in-ground pool, bigger than the one at your parents’ place.”

  “I like that,” she said. In fact, the pool was the only thing she missed about her childhood home.

  “It can be whatever kind you want—”

  “Kidney-shaped.”

  “That’ll work.”

  “And heated.”

  “Of course.”

  “More,” she said.

  “The hill continues to sweep eastward about a hundred yards or so, till you come to a pond.”

  “Pond?”

  “Where I’ll take our kids fishing.”

  She shivered happily. “Boys love to fish.”

  “Girls, too, if they’re given the chance.”

  Ellie abhorred the thought of impaling an earthworm with a steel hook, but she kept quiet.

  “I don’t know if the pond is stocked, but if it isn’t, we’ll stock it with bluegill, trout, some catfish. At the moment it’s ringed with cattails and weeds, but we’ll mow it all down so you can see the water from anywhere. And there’ll be a bench where we can sit and watch the waterbugs dart around.”

  She could see it all, even the bugs. The main detail, though, was their children, their tiny bodies in constant motion. They’d have bonfires down there, roast marshmallows and hot dogs, do all the things of which Chris had spoken fondly when reminiscing about his childhood in Indiana. It had been impossible for her to visualize back in California, the ocean and constant sun too dominant to allow her to construct a world so alien. But now, God help her, she really was growing excited about the possibilities.

  “I’m thinking,” Chris said, “that you should have a gourmet kitchen…”

  They went on that way a good deal longer, dreaming about a future that seemed very possible, very real.

  Days later, after it all went bad, and later still, after it got much, much worse—unimaginably worse—she would look back on that night and think of it as the happiest she’d ever been. Happier than when they’d met. Happier than their wedding day. Happier even than the time she’d gotten a false positive from a pregnancy test and had believed for three wonderful, deluded hours.

  She’d look back on that night and remember the feel of her husband’s arms around her, the sound of his voice in the gloom. Their lovemaking.

  She would remember these things and hold them close to her like talismans against the onslaught of darkness.

  But they would prove useless.

  In the end, everything did.

  Chapter Three

  Chris had only been at the library ten minutes before a stirring on the hackles of his neck told him he was being watched. He paused in his skimming of A History of Iroquois County and looked up. The man who’d been staring at him slipped behind a tall bookcase, but not before Chris glimpsed a gnomish belly, the thick disdainful eyebrows: the grocery clerk from Ike’s.

  Without thinking Chris put the book down and pushed away from the table. He heard diminishing footfalls, the muffled thuds rapid enough to suggest the man wished to escape. Chris rounded the bookcase and caught a hint of black hair bobbing down the steps to the library’s basement.

  As he reached the bottom of the steps, he saw that the basement was devoted to children’s books. The low ceiling was mitigated by the expansiveness of the room, the load-bearing ivory pillars the only encumbrances to his vision. It was behind one of these pillars that Chris glimpsed a leather-coated shoulder, a sliver of nose poking out.

  Chris approached the clerk and stopped directly opposite him, a chest-high bookcase the only thing dividing them. Eyes downcast, Chris said, “Read a lot of young adult books?”

  The clerk’s voice was defiant. “Some.”

  Chris bunched his lips, nodded. “I like it. Some of it, at least. When you teach freshmen, you better have an idea of what they read.”

  The clerk said nothing.

  “What do you like? Sci-fi? Fantasy?”

  The clerk’s doughy face was flushed and miserable. Dewdrops of sweat glistened on his high, pale forehead. “Is there a reason you’re badgering me?”

  Chris shrugged, ran a finger over the book spines before him. “I saw you spying and figured I’d find out why.”

  The clerk’s eyes narrowed, his recessed chin tilting up from its nest of flab. “Is it happening?”

  “Is what happening?”

  The little man pretended to study his fingernails. “Have you seen her yet?”

  Chris glanced around, but the only other people down here were a pair of mothers chattering away while their toddlers drooled on the stuffed animals lying about.

  “I don’t know what—”

  “You’ve slept with her, haven’t you?”

  The air in the low-ceilinged room was molten, oppressive.

  “You’re drunk,” Chris said and began to turn.

  “Hope your wife doesn’t find out.”

  Chris stood rigid. He felt suddenly feverish, a moist furnace superheating his flesh.

  “How many times have you been with her?” the man asked. “Half a dozen?”

  Chris glanced over at the mothers, who were still oblivious of everything save their chatter. The toddlers played on happily.

  “It’s your secret from the little lady, isn’t it?” the clerk asked. “Your own sweet place.”

  Shut your goddamned mouth, Chris thought. He could feel the muscles of his forearms knot and jump like ravening wolves pinned under tarps of flesh.

  But the little man seemed not to notice, only spoke louder. “Of course, you’re planning on bringing the wife one of these nights, right? Such a lovely spot, I’m sure she’d like it.”

  Chris swallowe
d. Didn’t the man realize how loud he was being, how easily one of these chattering women might hear? Or were their too-polite faces concealing the truth, that they heard every word and would soon divulge all this to Ellie?

  “Bet she was amazin’,” the man said, his voice adopting a mordant country drawl. “Best lovin’ you ever had.”

  Lost in the memory of the clearing, the pale flesh of the woman’s thighs, Chris grew faint.

  “She speak to you, Chris? Did she whisper about immortality?”

  Chris staggered against a shelf, and though the man made no move to help him, he felt the clerk’s presence reaching out, enshrouding him. The books breathed a heavy haze of must and browning paper. The overhead fluorescents blared down at him in feverish condemnation. He pushed away from the bookcase, his body listing, and then he was hurrying toward the stairway, his hands clutching the rail as though he were infirm. When he reached the top of the stairs and burst through the first set of double doors, he was sure he’d escaped the man’s unctuous voice, but as he shoved through the second set of doors and started down the steps he heard footsteps behind him. Raindrops began to darken the sidewalk, but they restored little of his clarity. From the west came an ominous rumble, a bad storm approaching.

  “Fess up, Chris,” the voice behind him insisted.

  “Leave me alone,” Chris muttered. Ahead he could see the Camry, parked on a side street. Just a few seconds away.

  “Your aunt understood. She knew Destragis’s secrets. That’s why she bequeathed his gifts to you, don’t you see?”

  “Campbell!” a voice shouted from behind them.

  The little man froze. Wobbling a little, Chris turned to see who it was.

  Daniel Wolf, the German Baptist carpenter he’d met at the grocery store. Only now the smile and friendly demeanor were gone. The man stood in the middle of the sidewalk, arms rigid at his sides.

  “Get away from him,” Wolf said.

  The little man, Campbell apparently, took a step backward, but his upper lip curled in a petulant sneer. “This has nothing to do with you.”

  Chris viewed the scene through a gauzy gray curtain. In desperation he stumbled the last few steps to the Camry. As he struggled to extract the keys from his jeans, he heard Daniel Wolf’s voice: “…won’t happen. You better stay away…” But the majority of it was lost in the sound of rushing water that assailed his ears. The rain was falling steadily now, an icy needling that helped him focus on getting the damn keys out and pushing the unlock button. He heard Campbell yelling something at Wolf, but it was cut off as he slumped in the driver’s seat. He pulled away from the curb, but as he did he glimpsed Daniel Wolf swinging at Campbell, the Amish man’s face a hateful rictus.

  Chris stopped the car and stared in the overhead mirror as Wolf lifted the little man, reared back, and slugged him in the face. Through the shut windows he could hear Campbell’s head snap back.

  He cut the engine and climbed out. As he approached he saw Wolf’s fist rise and fall, rise and fall, and beneath him the clerk flailed his hands to ward the larger man off. Wolf aimed a haymaker that barely missed Campbell’s face.

  “Take it easy,” Chris said, venturing closer.

  Wolf reared back, swung again, and this time his fist sliced between Campbell’s upraised hands. The blow caught the little man above the left eye, and blood immediately began to pour from the gash.

  “That’s enough,” Chris said. He interposed his body between the struggling men. Campbell was weeping. Wolf shoved Chris aside as if he were a child and set to work again pummeling the helpless clerk.

  From behind, Chris got Wolf in a bear hug and struggled to drag him away, and though it took several moments, in the end he was able to separate them.

  Wolf spun, and when Chris beheld the flaring nostrils, the hairline soaked with sweat, he was sure Wolf would start in on him too. Then the man’s eyes seemed to clear.

  Wolf dragged a forearm across his mouth, looked around and found his hat, which he picked up and put back on. Wolf glanced at Campbell’s curled-up form. “I’m sorry he had to dredge all this up again.”

  “You’ll regret this,” Campbell said between sobs. “Bruder will pay you a visit tonight.”

  “Not likely,” Wolf answered. “He’d rather you were somewhere else, too.”

  He turned to Chris. “Go home now, Mr. Crane. Forget you ever met this person.”

  Campbell had gotten to his feet, was staring at Wolf with fear and rage. “She came because she wanted to.”

  The black look returned to Wolf’s eyes. “Not another word.”

  Campbell lowered his gaze, turned and moved away, occasionally glancing back to make sure he wasn’t going to get knocked down again.

  Wolf eyed Chris a long moment. Then he said, “Keep an eye your wife,” and walked away.

  Chapter Four

  She’d driven halfway to town before she got a single flickering bar on her cell phone, and when Ellie heard the voice in the message, she didn’t immediately place it.

  Then she realized it was Katherine.

  “Hey, El, just calling to make sure you’re still alive.” A cynical laugh. “I guess if something really had happened to you I’d feel guilty for joking about it, huh?” A pause, Katherine preparing to get down to business. Ellie steeled herself.

  “I know you’re not my biggest fan, but I’ve been worried about you lately. Now that you’re within driving distance of Ann Arbor, it’s ridiculous for us to keep acting like we don’t know each other. Anyway, what I was thinking—”

  Ellie pressed seven, erasing the message. Her chest hurt, and her stomach had soured the way it always did when she thought of Katherine. It occurred to her that there had been two messages, but she wouldn’t risk listening to the second one; if it was Katherine again, she might just toss the phone out the window, stop, and back over the damn thing.

  Her eyes began to water. She became aware of a persistent throb in the base of her skull, the pressure reminding her of an elementary school classmate, his name long forgotten, who used to torture her during recess by chasing her down and pinning her face on the sparse playground grass, the dust that puffed into her mouth a welcome reprieve from the boy’s terrible ketchup breath. His thumbs would delve into the vulnerable flesh just below her skull, digging and prodding like some crazed masseuse, until her eyes were muddy with tears.

  Might as well go home, she thought. She veered onto a side road and made a U-turn. She signaled, cranked the wheel to the right and had just nosed onto the county road again when a deafening blare sent both feet stomping on the break, the open-bed semi roaring by her in a clattering blast of outrage.

  Ellie sat immobile, her breathing an arrhythmic flurry. The truck had missed the front end of the Camry by less than a foot. Though the semi had traveled more than half a football field already, she could still see its back end swishing like the tail of a receding shark.

  Focus, Ellie, a voice reminded her.

  Placing her hands at the ten and two o’clock positions for the first time since driver’s ed, she drove on. A film tasting of warm milk coated the inside of her mouth. She stared fixedly at the unspooling road and waited for the painful squeeze of her heartbeat to subside. After what seemed an interminable period of driving, her turnoff appeared. She switched on her blinker and guided the Camry onto the puddled gravel of County Road 1200. She winced as the wheels dipped and jounced in the multitudinous chuckholes pockmarking the road. Closer to the forest now, Ellie felt a tightening in her chest, a feeling very much like being submerged from the neck down.

  The woods loomed before her, and soon the dense trees encroached on both sides. The heavy sensation in her chest grew, made breathing difficult. She reached over, thumbed down her window a crack, and immediately regretted it. Not only was the air in the Camry still gravid with the portentous aura that had plagued her all day, but now her skin was lacerated with a blade of freezing April wind. She rolled the window up and, with a combination
of claustrophobia and sorrow, spotted the turnoff to their house ahead.

  Ellie had completed the turn and driven fifty yards when she saw the black dog in the middle of the lane.

  She depressed the brakes, the Camry skidding a little before halting twenty yards in front of the Rottweiler. Behind the dog she distinguished the frail bridge, and she was reminded of all the fairy tales wherein trolls or evil knights guarded bridges forbiddingly against safe passage. The huge animal’s eyes reflected her headlamps, lent the creature a spectral intensity. Her foot on the brake grew numb, her hands on the wheel tingly. Though she told herself it was imagination, she was certain the low growl she heard was real and not just the Camry’s idling engine.

  Stop being a wimp, El. Drive forward and the damn thing will scamper back to wherever the hell it came from.

  She compressed her lips, wished death upon her sister for taunting her at such a moment. Yet she did ease her foot off the brake pedal, rolled slowly forward thinking the dog might bolt in self-preservation. Fifteen yards away now. Ten. Five.

  The black dog stood in the lane, absolutely unmoving.

  Ellie heaved a sigh, brought the Camry to a stop. Shoving the gearshift into park, she thought, What now, Katherine? Any more bright ideas?

  If the goddamn lane weren’t so narrow she could simply sneak around the animal. She eyed the muddy shoulder, the dead leaves and the standing water, and dismissed the notion. The last thing she needed was to get stuck here, a mile away from home with a useless cell phone and a vicious dog the size of a Bengal tiger.

  It couldn’t hurt to try the phone again, could it?

  She raised her hips, reached into her jeans pocket for the cell. Her fingers had just touched its smooth surface when the animal leaped onto the hood.

  Ellie screamed, flailed her hands at the snarling beast. She watched in disbelief as its thick yellow claws clattered and scratched over the windshield, smearing dirt and what might be blood all over the glass. Its immense muzzle rammed the windshield, a gout of viscous slaver splattering in a messy streak. The curved fangs snapped in idiot need.