No Sanctuary

  We’re not out of ammo, Rick thought. He wanted to lift his shirt-tail and let her see the revolver, but he’d promised Bert to keep the gun secret from the girls.

  It would ease their minds, knowing.

  But Bert was right. If Andrea knew about the gun, she might become very brave and make matters worse.

  “We’ll be all right,” he said.

  “Yeah? You got an Uzi or something?”

  “No, but I’m good with my dukes.”

  She smiled. “That’s consoling.”

  “Is this banter absolutely necessary?” Bert asked.

  Rick faced forward again. “Just trying to keep up the morale of the troops.”

  Her eyes flashed. She looked shaky. Rick realized, suddenly, that he no longer felt loose and shivery inside. “The banter helps,” he said. “Why don’t I take over the lead.” Bert nodded. She stepped aside. Though the late afternoon was mild and they had been walking in the shade, she was wet. Honey-colored curls were stuck to her forehead. Her face and neck looked slick. The sides of her pale blue shirt were dark. Rick saw that she had buttoned it all the way up. He stopped in front of her.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  A corner of her mouth twitched. “Maybe we should turn back,” she said. “The more I think about it...”

  “Why don’t I go on ahead,” Rick suggested. “You and the girls could wait here. There’s no need for all of us to confront those creeps.”

  “I’m not going to let you do it alone,” Bert said.

  “Besides,” Bonnie added, “we don’t even know for sure where they are. Or the wildlife, and I’m talking cats, here, for that matter.”

  “Yeah,” Andrea said. “What if you go on your own, and the guys, or the cats, jump the rest of us?”

  “The bastards are probably up near those rocks,” Rick said, pointing. He deliberately didn’t mention cats. They hadn’t actually seen a cougar anyway, so in his opinion, The Thugateers posed a more immediate danger.

  The rocks suddenly seemed very close. There it was again. Whoever, whatever it was, ducked out of the way, behind another rock. It wasn’t one of the teens. Too thin, too wiry. Too spindly. What the hell was it? Good thing he’d got the gun.

  For godsake, what is it about this place?

  One thing’s for sure. Little House on the Prairie it ain’t.

  Too right...

  Best not alarm the girls till I know the score about our mystery stalker.

  “We’d better all stick together,” Andrea said. “It’ll be four against three. Even if some of us are of the female variety, it doesn’t mean we’re helpless.”

  “And we’ve got our knives,” Bonnie added.

  “We’ll stay together,” Bert said.

  Rick kept going. She moved on behind him. He felt her hand rub lightly for a moment between his shoulder blades. Then it was gone.

  He walked along the shoreline path, closer and closer to the rocks where the boys had been crouching to watch Bonnie and Andrea. He saw no heads among the rocks.

  They would’ve seen us coming by now, he thought. They probably took to the trees. We may not find them at all.

  He passed the rocks, and looked back at the place where they’d been.

  Gone.

  Bert touched his shoulder. He snapped his head to the left.

  Jase was sitting on a log beside the fire ring of a campsite not far from shore. He wore jeans and no shirt. He was staring at them. A cigarette hung from a comer of his mouth.

  Luke was stretched out on a sleeping bag in a patch of sunlight. His hands were folded under his head. He wore sunglasses and jockey shorts. His skin looked almost as white as his underwear, except for a cluster of zits in the center of his chest.

  Wally, sitting cross-legged in the shade, was stripping the wrapper off a Mars bar. He still wore his cut-off jeans and camouflage shirt.

  “Hi there,” Jase said as Rick entered the clearing. Bert moved up beside him, and he heard the footsteps of the girls to the rear.

  Wally looked up from his candy bar. A smile spread across his broad face. Luke propped himself up with straight arms and crossed his outstretched legs at the ankles.

  “Thought you people would be on the other side of the pass by now,” Jase said.

  “We thought you would, too,” Bert told him.

  “Nope. When we got to this place, we decided to flake out.”

  “Wally was whining about his feet,” Luke said.

  Wally, chewing on his candy bar, nodded agreement.

  “So you didn’t go up the mountain at all?” Bert asked.

  “Nope. Been here since about noon.”

  “Funny. We walked right by this place a couple of hours ago and you weren’t here.”

  “Don’t know how that happened.”

  “Must’ve been while we were gathering firewood,” Luke said.

  Rick glanced at the pile of kindling and branches near the fireplace. He hadn’t noticed it when he and Bert had looked at the campsite earlier. But he was certain that the boys’ packs hadn’t been here either.

  They’re lying, he thought. Of course they are. They’d been the ones with the binoculars high up on the trail, and they’d come back down because of the women.

  “Are you going to introduce us to your friends?” Jase asked.

  “Tweedle-dee and Tweedle-dum,” Andrea said.

  Luke grinned.

  “The friendly type,” Jase said, and mashed his cigarette under his boot.

  “I don’t like being spied on,” Andrea said.

  “Shut up, would you?” Bonnie muttered.

  “Has somebody been spying on you?” Jase asked.

  “Sounds like she means us,” Luke said. “Do you mean us?”

  “Who do you think I mean, anus-face?”

  “Woooo.”

  Bert whirled around and glared at Andrea. “Would you please stop it?”

  “You people must have us mixed up with someone else,” Jase said, all innocence. “We haven’t been spying on anyone. We’ve just been hanging out, relaxing. Isn’t that right, Wally?”

  Wally swallowed and nodded. His face was bright red.

  “Isn’t that right, Luke?”

  “We have simply been minding our own business. Frankly, I find myself disgruntled. Not only are we being unjustly accused, but my face has been maligned by this vicious wench.”

  “I think you’re the one getting spied on,” Wally blurted.

  “Indeed. I believe they came here for the sole purpose of ogling me in my dainties.”

  “Nothing there to ogle,” Andrea said.

  Wally whooped. Jase’s thin lips turned up. Bonnie squeezed Andrea’s shoulder, making her grimace for a moment before she knocked the hand away.

  With a thumb, Luke hooked out his waistband and peered down the front. “Oh yeah,” he said, “something there all right. Want to see?”

  “That’s about enough,” Rick said.

  The elastic snapped down. Luke grinned at him.

  “I don’t know what you guys think you’re up to, but rd suggest you pack up your stuff and get out of here,” Rick said.

  Jase narrowed his eyes. “Hey, man, it’s a free country. You don’t like us here, you move on.”

  “And have you follow us there, too?”

  “We haven’t followed you anywhere. We were here first. You don’t like it, tough.”

  “We’re not leaving,” Bert told him. “We’re staying exactly where we are—and I’m sure you know where that is. We saw you looking at the girls from those rocks by the shore. Now here’s the thing. Stay away. Don’t come anywhere near our camp, or else.”

  “Oooo, I’m trembling,” Luke said. “I’m so scared I just don’t know what to do.”

  Jase sneered. “I don’t know what your problem is. You come in here like gangbusters, calling us names, telling us to get out of here, threatening us. Where do you get off, huh? We didn’t do shit to you. Sure, we took a look when those two
were swimming. Why not? It’s a public lake. They want to go swimming, we got every right to watch. So we watched, so what? I tell you, the view wasn’t all that terrific. As for staying away from your camp, you can bet on it. Give me one good reason why we’d want to go near your camp.”

  “They probably think we want to molest them,” Luke said.

  “Wishful thinking,” Jase said.

  Wally, staring at the ground, chuckled.

  “Just stay away,” Bert said. “We don’t want any trouble.”

  “You stay away from us. We’re not interested. You gals get the hots, you’ll just have to settle for him.” He looked at Rick. “I’m sure he’d be glad to ...”

  “Shut your face,” Rick snapped.

  He felt a tug on his arm. “Come on,” Bert said. “Let’s get out of here.”

  “Yeah,” Jase said. “Take him away before he loses his temper and hurts me.” ·

  Rick stepped backward as Bert pulled him. Bonnie turned away from the boys. Andrea, still facing them, slipped her knife out of its sheath and pointed it at Jase. “I’m gonna be watching for you shitheads,” she said, then turned around.

  They walked toward the shoreline path.

  The boys began taunting them from a distance.

  “Oooooo,” from Luke.

  “Now they’re threatening us with weapons,”Jase said. “We oughta get the cops on them.”

  “What cops?” Wally asked.

  “That’s right, there ain’t no cops out here.”

  “Oh, dear!” Luke blurted. “Who, oh who, shall save us from this tribe of paranoid Amazons? Are we damned? Is this all she wrote? And me without a will!”

  “Hey,” Wally said, “you should’ve shown them your dick.”

  “Wally’s getting brave,” Rick muttered.

  “They wouldn’t have known what it was,” Luke said. “Anyway, I didn’t want to turn on that fag who’s with them.”

  Rick looked over his shoulder. The trees were in his way.

  “What a bunch of crotch lice,” Andrea said.

  “Keep your voice down,” Bonnie told her.

  “They can’t hear me.”

  “How many dykes does it take to screw a fag?” Wally’s voice. Yelling.

  “I don’t know, how many?” Luke.

  “Three, you dork! Two to hold him down and one to hold him up!”

  “The guy’s a wit,” Rick said.

  Bert, walking beside him on the path, suddenly stopped and turned around. She glared toward the trees concealing the boys’ camp. Suddenly, she shouted, “I gave you my mosquito repellent, you fat tub of lard!”

  Rick looked at her, amazed.

  “Well, I did,” she said. A comer of her mouth turned up. Rick patted her rump.

  They heard nothing more from the boys as they hiked back to camp.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “Is something the matter?” Jerry asked.

  What could possibly be the matter? Gillian thought. I’ve just spent last night and today in the house of a rapist, a psycho, a homicidal maniac.

  She shrugged her shoulders.

  “You seem a little distant.”

  She forced a smile and waved across the patio table at him. “I’m all right here. No more than, oh, four feet away.”

  “Didn’t like the dinner?” he asked.

  “It was awful. That’s why I gobbled it down like a sow.”

  “Are you saying it was swill?”

  Gillian laughed softly.

  In spite of his little joke, Jerry still looked concerned. “Is it something I did?”

  “No. For heaven’s sake. You’ve been great..”

  “If you’re still upset about this afternoon... It.

  “It’s not that. So I lost my pants in your pool? Big deal, huh? Yeah. Cripes.” She picked up her mai-tai and drank the last of it. “It’s Fredrick Holden.”

  “Who?”

  Gillian realized that she had slipped. Maybe it’s Freudian, she thought. Maybe I want to tell him the truth, the whole truth. And what would he think of me then? The girl’s a lunatic who gets her jollies playing Goldilocks.

  “Uncle Fredrick,” she said. “I’ve found some things that have me worried.”

  “That’s right, you mentioned this afternoon about his gruesome taste in books.”

  “It’s more than just books. I had some time to kill before coming over and thought I’d take a look at one of his video tapes. I put one in his VCR. It was supposed to be The Howling. That’s what the case said. It turned out to be some kind of sicko sado-masochistic shit called Torture Slave. I just watched a minute of it. The thing was vile. I mean, I’ve seen a few porno movies in my time. But this was different. This was like something they don’t carry at the corner video shop. I did some snooping, and he’s got a whole bunch of movies like that. They’re all hidden inside cases for stuff like Star Wars and E.T.”

  “How well do you know your Uncle Fredrick?” Jerry asked. He sounded worried.

  “Not very well,” Gillian said, surprised and glad that he hadn’t made any jokes about wishing she had brought the tape along with her.

  “Has he ever tried anything with you?”

  She shook her head.

  “It seems pretty odd that he would ask you to house-sit for him. He must’ve known that you might look at some of his videos. They weren’t hidden? They were right out in plain sight?”

  “On the shelves in his den.”

  “Apparently, he didn’t care if you looked at them. Maybe he wanted you to look at them.”

  “Why would he want that?”

  “I’d hate to speculate. I mean, he’s your uncle.”

  Sure he is, Gillian thought.

  “How long is he supposed to be away on this trip of his?”

  “He told me he’d come back Thursday,” Gillian said.

  Jerry frowned at her. “I think it might be a good idea for you to get out of there. I think you should leave right away, go back to your own apartment and stay away from the guy.”

  “Trying to get rid of me?” Gillian asked.

  “I’m serious. If those films are as bad as you say, he isn’t just a normal horny guy who enjoys skin flicks. And the fact that he left them out for you to see ... I don’t like it. I don’t think you should stay in his house. He might be planning to come back early, and ... and I don’t think you should be there when he does.”

  And Jerry doesn’t even know about the scrapbook, she thought. Just the movies are enough to make him fear for my safety. Tell him about the scrapbook ...

  And he’d probably want to call the police.

  And it would all come out that I’m a criminal. No thanks. “As a matter of fact,” she said, “I already made up my mind to leave. I’m all packed up and ready to go. Hell, I’d be gone now except I had to collect on your bribe of dinner.”

  Gillian stood up, lifting her plate and glass off the table. “Come on, let’s take the dishes in.”

  He loaded his hands and followed her into the kitchen. Three trips later, the patio table was clear. Gillian opened his dishwasher.

  “No way,” Jerry said. “These can wait. Would you care for an after-dinner drink?”

  “Trying to get me sloshed?”

  Jerry stepped up behind her. He put his hands on her shoulders. The feel of them seemed to radiate down her body. The force of her reaction surprised Gillian. Is this the first time he’s touched me? she wondered.

  If you don’t count towing me to poolside after my crash.

  “How about coffee? he asked.

  “I was just kidding about you trying to get me drunk.”

  “I know. I’d rather have coffee myself. I’d hate to spend the rest of our evening in a drunken stupor.”

  “Me too.”

  He gave her shoulders a gentle squeeze, then stepped away and began to prepare a pot of coffee.

  Gillian turned around. She leaned back against the counter. Its edge pressed her an inch above the abrasions.
She wasn’t in pain there, just a little tender. She watched Jerry.

  He had dressed nicely for the dinner. He wore a neatly pressed, short-sleeved plaid shirt that was very much like the blouse that Gillian had decided to wear. His slacks were white, the same as Gillian’s shorts. He wore topsiders, she wore sandals.

  “Do you realize we match?” she asked.

  He smiled. “I noticed.” He dumped scoops of coffee into the filter.

  It felt good to be with him.

  She wished she could tell him her secret.

  Maybe someday, she thought.

  Don’t count your chickens ...

  “There’s a pen and notepad by the phone,” Jerry said. “In case you want to give me your phone number.” He glanced over his shoulder at her. “I don’t even know your last name. I looked you up under Holden, but you weren’t there.”

  “He’s my mother’s brother,” she said.

  Jerry’s tried to find me in the telephone book. He wants my number. He doesn’t want to lose me after I leave tonight.

  God. All right! -

  “I’m O’Neill,” she told him.

  “Gillian O’Neill. Nice.”

  She stepped over to the telephone. On the pad there, she wrote her name, address and telephone number.

  You’re really giving it away, she thought. You broke the fuck in next door. He’ll be able to tell the cops exactly where to find you.

  It won’t come to that. Probably.

  So what if there’s a risk?

  While standing by the phone, she copied his number off the sticker. She tore it from the bottom of the paper and tucked it into the pocket of her blouse.

  Soon, the coffee was done. They took their mugs outside and sat at the table by the pool.

  It was dusk. Darkness was not far away.

  “I love this time of the evening,” Gillian said. “It’s so peaceful.”

  “Yeah.” Jerry sipped his coffee. “We used to go out after supper for some bounce-or-fly on the street in front of the , house.”

  “I did that. Didn’t get up to bat very often, though. I wasn’t much of a catch.”

  “I bet you were a good catch. I have the feeling you were something of a tomboy.”