The Darkest Lullaby Read online

  “Goddamn you!” she screamed at the dog and drew back, gasping, as it lunged at her, its flared nostrils the size of bathtub drains.

  Drive, you moron, drive!

  Momentarily grateful for Katherine’s scolding, she popped the Camry into gear and stomped the accelerator. The back wheels skidded a moment, the animal’s ferocity momentarily giving way to confusion. Then the tires grabbed the muddy lane and the Camry lurched forward. The animal yelped in surprise. One black shoulder smashed the windshield as the dog was hurled off balance. As the Camry picked up speed, the dog pawed the air in an effort to regain its feet. The car cleared the bridge.

  Now.

  She slammed on the brakes and watched in triumph as the dog tumbled off the hood and somersaulted for twenty feet. In an instant it was up again, snarling, tensed for another assault on the Camry.

  “Fuck it,” Ellie muttered and floored the gas.

  The car bore down on the animal, but rather than moving, the Rottweiler actually galloped forward, apparently meaning to ram the grill head on.

  “Jesus,” she gasped and jerked the wheel at the last moment. The Camry swerved toward the shoulder, the animal actually snapping at the car’s front corner as it whipped by. There was a dull, sickening crunch and a wet wail of agony. She spun the wheel back to the left, but only succeeded in swinging the car sideways, a tree rushing at the passenger’s window. The Camry struck it, the door imploding like an accordion, Ellie thrown sideways as glass pelted her face, the airbag punching her body and whipping back her head.

  The car settled and Ellie lay unconscious in her seat.

  When she became aware of the ticking sound, her first thought was of the grandfather clock in her parents’ house. Beneath that she heard the pattering of rain on the roof. Something pressed down on her, and from her neck came a needling pain.

  She remembered the crash.

  Ellie moaned. She felt like hell. The airbag had mashed her boobs flat and pinioned her to the seat. A wave of claustrophobia swept over her. She had to get out of the car soon or she’d be screaming like a lunatic and thrashing to get free.

  She opened her eyes, reached out, and after several frustrating moments, was able to nudge open her door. By wiggling her hips and pushing against the console to her right she was able to scoot sideways toward the open door. With an effort she swung a leg outside and winced when her foot squished in mud. Heavy drops of rain smacked her left leg, her shoulder, but despite the frigid shower, her focus remained on getting out of the car. With one final wrench, she yanked free of the airbag and sat panting on the edge of the seat.

  When she’d caught her breath, she glanced back at the imploded passenger door, though moving her neck cost an effort. Her preliminary and completely unmedical diagnosis was that she’d sustained no serious injuries but would be sore for days. The Camry was in better shape than she’d thought. Had she been traveling faster when she slid off the lane, things might have been much worse—for her and the car. Fortunately, the sparse gravel had given the tires something to grip, and the damage had been limited.

  Get back to the house, Ellie. Get your husband.

  Take it easy, she thought. Just take it easy a second. It’s not like—

  A low growl ripped through her thoughts. She looked up and saw, ten yards away, the Rottweiler dragging itself toward her.

  Can’t be, she thought, but it obviously was. The huge black dog was in bad shape—dying even—yet it continued to limp forward on three legs.

  At once she realized what the crunching sound had been. The back left leg, she saw, had been snapped in half by her rear tire. It flopped uselessly behind the Rottweiler as it made its slow, inexorable way toward her. It was a good thing she’d awakened when she had…had she been out any longer, the vicious bastard would have been right beneath her door when she opened it, and then—

  Stop it. You did wake up in time. Now get your ass out of the car and get home!

  Ellie pushed to her feet and nearly crumpled when she put weight on her right leg. She moaned, hung on the open door for a moment and rode out the spires of pain rocketing up her leg.

  Not broken, she thought, but definitely bruised. Bruised badly. Man, what luck she had.

  A guttural bark made her jump. The Rottweiler had halved the distance between them, would be upon her in seconds if she didn’t get moving now.

  Grimacing, Ellie sidestepped the door, hopped on her good leg to the end of the hood. The dog continued to lurch closer, its growling a throaty, raspy sound. The animal’s head was lowered, its eyes never leaving hers, its expression a mixture of wrath and loathing.

  It got her moving. The first few yards she nearly collapsed because of the pain. Somehow, she kept her balance. The pitted lane slowed her, the lurking craters forbidding progress. She shot a look back at the Rottweiler and was stunned to see it rising, leaping forward. Then its bad back leg gave way and it nosedived into the lane.

  Ellie smiled grimly and pushed ahead.

  She had limped for nearly a minute before looking back again, and this time when she did she glimpsed the animal dragging its broken body toward the woods.

  I hope you die in there, she thought and felt no guilt at all. She liked animals and attempted to be kind to them as a general rule, but when one tried to tear her to shreds, all bets were off. The son of a bitch.

  I hope you die, she thought again as the animal disappeared into the forest.

  I hope you die.

  Chris’s first thought upon hearing the front door bang open—a thought for which he would later feel guilty—was: Not now. Please, of all times, not now.

  For once the writing was going well. He had no idea what the story was about, nor did he even have a skeleton plot. But he did have a scene—an eerie one at that—and that was something. That, at least, was a start.

  He typed on as long as he could before Ellie’s heavy tramping on the stairs vanquished his hold on the scene. The muscles in his arms bunched. He swiveled in the chair, laced his fingers in his lap, and watched the door with unmasked asperity. She needed to see how furious he was, dammit, needed to understand how fragile his concentration was. The last thing he needed was her stomping through the house like a Nazi stormtrooper.

  She opened the door and his anger drained away.

  Rising from his chair, he noted the blood streaking her face and neck. She took a step in his direction, winced, and leaned against the doorjamb for support. He got an arm around her.

  “Jesus, Ellie, what the hell happened?”

  He started her toward his vacated chair, but she shook her head. “Bed.”

  He nodded, leaned lower to support her weight as they approached the stairs, but their height disparity made it terribly awkward. Ellie gasped as she put too much weight on her injured right leg.

  “Ah, to hell with this,” he said, and scooped her into his arms.

  “Ohhh,” she groaned. “Please don’t drop me.”

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “You don’t weigh as much as my writing desk did.”

  “Good to know I weigh less than a gigantic piece of mahogany furniture.”

  She whimpered as he barked her ankle against the banister.

  He grimaced. “Sorry about that.”

  After a few more ginger steps, they were in the bedroom. Rather than laying her on the bed right away, he contrived to push the covers down with one of his knees. When that only jounced her body and made her hiss with pain, he abandoned his efforts and laid her as gently as he could on the made bed.

  “What happened, El?” he asked and pushed a lock of brown hair out of her eyes. He could smell the sheen of fear on her. Her skin was moist and unnaturally cool.

  “Had an accident,” she muttered.

  “You crashed the car?” he said and gritted his teeth in self-reproach at his choice of words. Nice one, Chris. Why don’t you just yell at her and threaten to dock her allowance?

  But if she was irritated by the question, she didn’t s
how it. She nodded, a sweaty arm coming up and covering her eyes.

  “Oh, baby,” he said and touched the side of her face that wasn’t crusted with blood. “What can I do? Call an ambulance? I can drive you to the hospital.”

  She shook her head slowly, as if in a fog. “Just banged up.”

  “Think your leg’s broken?”

  Another head shake. “I don’t think so.” She took a shallow breath and swallowed, her throat clicking dryly.

  “Water?”

  She nodded.

  Glad to finally have something to do, he pushed away from the bed, jogged to the bathroom, and found a coffee mug she’d left beside the sink. Ordinarily her habit of leaving drinking glasses all over the house drove him nuts, but now he was grateful for it. He washed out the old coffee and filled it with tap water. Returning to Ellie, he noticed she’d risen to her elbows, was staring down at her legs.

  “You’re still in one piece,” he said and offered her the mug.

  “Barely.”

  After she’d sipped a couple times, he asked her what happened.

  She told him, his worry changing into astonishment, then incredulity. “And this dog’s still out there in the woods?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “But he’s in bad shape. Even worse than me, if you can believe that.”

  He wetted a washcloth, and dabbed at the cuts on her face. All of them appeared shallow, but in two or three places there seemed to be glass embedded under her skin.

  “We need to get you looked at,” he told her.

  “Ah, crap,” she said. “Do we have to?”

  He frowned at a pea-sized lump on her right cheekbone that had already begun to purple. “Unless you want scars on that pretty face of yours.”

  That was all the convincing Ellie required. She talked him out of calling for an ambulance, and though she still limped, they made it outside. It wasn’t until they got to the driveway that they remembered she had crashed the Camry.

  “Oh man,” he said, and despite himself, he joined Ellie in weary laughter. She sat heavily on the back porch and laughed, one hand clutched to her side.

  When he’d gotten control of it, he said, “Wait here.”

  He was about to hustle out to the Camry when he paused and regarded his wife. “You okay for a minute or two?”

  She cocked an eyebrow at him. “You mean, am I worried about that Rottweiler coming back to finish the job?”

  He waited.

  “He’s in no shape to hurt me again. Besides, I’m right here by the door. If he does show up, I’ll slip inside and let you do battle with him.”

  A black shape appeared to his left and he whirled, expecting to see the offending animal dragging its injured leg across the driveway. But it was Petey, returned from the forest, his muzzle gleaming in the overcast light.

  Chris walked over to him. “What gives, boy?”

  He reached down to scratch Petey on the back of the neck, but stopped when he saw a drop of blood patter on the grass between the dog’s paws. The dog’s toenails, too, he now saw, were splashed with blood.

  From the porch, Ellie called, “You get him, boy?”

  Petey bounced in place a moment, uttered a piercing bark.

  Chris eyed Ellie, saw the wry smile on her face, and began to grin.

  Scratching Petey on the back, he said, “Guess no one messes with Mama, huh?”

  Chapter Five

  Though the Camry looked terrible, it still drove. Because the passenger’s door was utterly destroyed, he had to put Ellie in the back seat. On the way to the hospital, he tilted the overhead mirror so he could keep an eye on her.

  The emergency room doctor at the Ravana Health Center—a gaunt Indian in his early forties—seemed competent. Chris held Ellie’s hand as the doctor carefully tweezed minute bits of glass from her skin. She hissed a couple times and nearly broke his hand when the doctor extracted a crescent-shaped sliver from her cheek.

  Ellie’s leg, the doctor told them, was bruised, just as Ellie had insisted. He prescribed a painkiller, which they picked up at the drug store on the way out of town. By eight-thirty they were home.

  Chris put Ellie to bed, and when he was sure she was sleeping deeply, he bent, kissed her on the forehead, and went downstairs. He stepped outside and surveyed the sky. The storm clouds had receded and left a clear blanket of stars in their wake.

  He drifted through the yard until he found himself on its eastern edge. Though he hadn’t cleared the path here, it seemed a good deal less overgrown than it had last week when he’d ended up in the clearing

  (and the smaller one)

  where the idea of building a dream home had occurred to him, where he and Ellie and their children could go

  (to the other clearing)

  and play tag in the meadow, lug rods and nightcrawlers down to the pond and catch that evening’s supper, explore the forest and

  (find her, find the one you heard)

  flit between the trees, chase lightning bugs, gather fallen branches and mossy logs to burn

  (the one who touched you)

  His skin suddenly tingling with nervous energy, he took another step forward and screwed up his eyes to see into the woods. He could have sworn…

  Yes. The path had been cleared. Whether he had done it by passing through here the other day or Ellie had done some trimming without mentioning it, the path was wider now than it was before.

  But still dark. He peered up at the night sky. The moon was nearly full, and there were a good many stars out, but all the same, it would be difficult to see in the forest. He’d need a flashlight.

  Excited now, he hurried back to the house and into the kitchen. Under the sink he found the flashlight he’d purchased at Ike’s. On a whim, he reached into the fridge and gathered a few cans of beer. One in his hand, one for each jean pocket.

  Petey meandered in from the dining room.

  “Hey, boy. I’m going for a walk, wanna come?”

  Petey watched him noncommittally.

  “C’mon,” Chris said. He held the screen door open, but rather than going out, Petey sat on his haunches.

  “No?”

  Petey’s head twitched up, and for a fleeting instant, Chris was convinced the animal had gestured toward Ellie, sleeping upstairs.

  “I see,” Chris said. “You want to stay back and watch over Mommy. That it?”

  Petey regarded him evenly.

  “Gotcha,” Chris said and went out.

  On the way through the yard, a pair of small birds fluttered by him before disappearing into the forest. At the edge of the path, he sucked in his stomach and stashed the flashlight between his boxer briefs and the waist of his jeans. He cracked open a can of beer, inhaled its pungent aroma and took a sloppy gulp. He wouldn’t need the flashlight yet, especially with the path so open. Later, though, when he ventured deeper into the forest, he’d be glad he brought it along. Hell, without it he might get lost and not make it back until morning.

  You might get lost anyway, he reminded himself.

  True, but if he did, what was the big deal? Petey was guarding Ellie like Cerberus guarded the gates of hell. She was safe.

  He took another swig of beer and moved into the engulfing woods.

  She’d taken Darvocet one other time, and despite the doctor’s assurances that the pills were perfectly safe, she met the onset of sleep with an atavistic dread and a fervent desire for Chris to come back and lie down beside her.

  Ellie knew there was a problem when the bed began to cant beneath her. Her saliva grew viscid and tasted vaguely of the shitty grape cough medicine her parents used to force-feed her. She began to perspire. Oh hell, she thought, her fingers digging into the sheets, it was all happening again, just as it had the time she’d wrecked her dad’s car and been given Darvocet in the hospital. That night had been a fever dream of edgy paranoia, and this night would be just as bad.

  Though she was aware of the bedroom around her, the air ovenlike and damp, she also reco
gnized the beginning of the dreams that weren’t quite dreams, because in them she still sensed her prone body here in the bed, still labored under the glaze of discomfort that made her wish she could leap out of her own skin.

  At first there was very little, just the tidily landscaped backyard of her childhood home. Then there was Katherine at maybe seven years old, far too tall for her age and making Ellie feel more than ever like a runt, an afterthought.

  Katherine frolicked through the sprinkler the babysitter had set up—Dad was at work, Mom was probably shopping—and though Ellie tried to keep pace with her, Kat bounded away like an antelope evading capture. As ever, Ellie felt weak and hopeless, but soon the scene melted into Kat’s high school graduation. She’d gotten valedictorian, of course, and received her adoring crowd in a manner befitting royalty while Ellie brooded at a card table tucked in the back corner of the yard, an uneaten plate of metallic-tasting pineapple chunks and dry carrot sticks her only companion. She remembered thinking how nice it would be for her sister to die of intestinal cancer when a hand on her shoulder made her jump. Kat embraced her, her sister’s smooth cheek pressing hers, saying, “I’ll miss you next year, El. I know I don’t show it, but I’m sick about being apart.” Ellie surprised herself by tearing up and hugging her sister back.

  And that was Katherine. Regal and infuriating, but occasionally the brown eyes would fill with love, and all the hurt would be washed away by the warmth and the lovely smile.

  Another memory, this one from Katherine’s first year of grad school, out with Katherine’s friends, Ellie just a few weeks removed from her twenty-first birthday and not very good at holding her liquor.

  Barhopping with Katherine’s set, thinking one of Katherine’s male friends—Derek, his name had been—was incredibly handsome. Flirting with Derek and getting mixed signals, the guy nice enough but once or twice exchanging glances with Katherine that pissed Ellie off. They rode from bar to bar, the six of them, two guys and four girls, and at those odds Ellie worked extra hard to stand out, drank more beer to show she could handle it. One guy clearly falling for one of Kat’s girlfriends, Derek pingponging between Kat and Ellie. A competition, familiar and savage. She read on her big sister’s face the quiet confidence that Derek would choose her over Ellie, the unwavering belief in herself that made success an inevitability. Ellie linking her arm with Derek’s on the way inside a bar called Harry’s, a name that struck her as hilarious. She laughed with Derek about it and drank shots with him, and at some point they were kissing and she was straddling him on a barstool, Derek getting into it as much as she was. Until the stool tipped and she and Derek were lying on their sides, laughing, the pitcher of beer overturned and splashing over half a dozen bystanders.