Enter, Night (34 page)

He played his light along the floor. Samantha sat in front of the
stove, silent now. Her eyes reflected back in the light of his flashlight.
“Samantha,” Elliot whispered. “Where’s Donna?”

Behind him, the sound of something falling over, but muffled, as
though from a near distance. He spun, shining the light in front of him.
It found the closed door leading to the basement. Elliot strained to hear,
but there was no further sound. Beads of sweat dotted his upper lip and
gathered along his hairline and under his armpits.

Elliot thought of the Wendigo legends of his childhood—the stories
of cannibalism and Indian witchcraft and malefic spiritualism associated
with Spirit Rock. He remembered the expression on Finn Miller’s face
when he first looked into the hockey bag and saw its gruesome contents.
The blood on those knives still smelled sour,
he thought.
They weren’t used
that long ago, and they weren’t washed.

Tucking the flashlight under his arm, he drew his gun with one hand
and turned the handle on the cellar door with the other.

“Hello?” The loudness of his own voice startled him. “Is anyone
down there? This is the police. I’m armed.”

Elliot listened for an answer. Receiving none, he stepped down
into the cellar, taking the stairs one at a time. The darkness here was
even deeper than it had been upstairs where there had been at least the
tangential glimmer of lights from the street, or from neighbourhood
porches.

Like a grave,
Elliot thought. Then, he rebuked himself:
Don’t be such
a moron. You’re a cop. Get your shit together
. He licked the sweat off his
upper lip and continued his descent till he reached the bottom of the
steps and stood on the floor of the cellar.

Playing his light along the walls, Elliot identified the hulking shape
of the washing machine and the dryer below a wooden shelf of laundry
detergent and miscellaneous odds and ends. The beam of light passed
through dusty jars of jams and preserves on the opposite wall, the light
transfixing the glass, the contents of the jars casting red and gold and
green shadows against the stone walls.

He half-turned, shining his light on the alcove leading to the area
off the main part of the basement, the place where Donna kept the
enormous deep freeze that had been her husband’s pride and joy. Slowly,
he walked towards the freezer, then stopped in his tracks. The contents
of the freezer were spread all over the floor around it, as though someone
had been so desperate to find whatever was inside that they’d tunnelled
through the frozen meat and packaged vegetables to reach the bottom.

Elliot cocked his gun, the click ricocheting loud and sharp against
the stone walls of the cellar. He approached the freezer, opened it, and
shone his light inside.

“Donna . . .” Elliot breathed. “Jesus.”

Donna Lemieux was curled up on the bottom of the freezer in a foetal
position. She was wearing the same jeans and pink top she’d worn the
previous night when he’d left her house. The clothes were stiff now, and
frozen. Her skin was blue with cold, and ice crystals blossomed like white
flowers in her long hair. It seemed impossible that her body had been
able to fit into the confined space without broken bones and dislocated
joints, but there was no evidence of any breakage or dislocation. Her
body had merely folded like a puppet in a shoebox, fitting itself to the
rectangular confines of the empty freezer as though it were a single bed.

Then, Donna Lemieux opened her dead, frozen eyes and sat up.

Elliot jumped back, startled by the sudden flurry of movement.
Instinctively, he swung his gun in her direction, resisting the urge to fire
just in time, and cursing himself for his stupidity in aiming a loaded gun
at an obviously injured woman.

Donna crawled out of the freezer in a sequence of crab like movements
that disoriented Elliot, because they seemed to occur almost too quickly
for his eye to follow. Then, suddenly, she was standing directly in front of
him, and her hands were on his shoulders.

“Donna, are you all right?” he said. “Jesus, you gave me one fuck of a
shock. What the hell are you doing down here?”

“
Elliot, you came back. . . . I knew you would
.”

“Donna, let’s get you upstairs where it’s warm,” he said, putting his
arm around her. “Then we need to get you to a hospital. What happened
to you? What are you doing here?” The coldness of her body burned
through his windbreaker, and only then did he realize that there was
something very, very wrong, besides the obvious wrongness of finding
the woman you couldn’t get it up for last night—until you fucked her in
the ass—sleeping in a deep freeze in the basement of her house. It felt as
though he had his arm around a frozen carcass in the meat locker of an
abattoir.

There’s no oxygen in that freezer, Elliot, and no way to open it from
the inside. Remember the kid when you were in the third grade, the one who
suffocated to death because he was playing in his parents’ deep freeze and
couldn’t get out? Something’s wrong here, Mr. Cop. So much for your instincts.

“Donna?” He pulled back. “Donna, how did you—”

She reached out, snakelike, and grasped his arm in a grip that made
him wince and suck in his breath. Her eyes weren’t blue, as they always
had been. Now they were a deep dark red, the same garnet colour as the
full jelly jars when he’d shone his light through them moments ago.

Donna took his other arm and pinned him to the wall. “
Elliot, I want
you to love me
.”

Though Elliot could see her lips move, the sound of her voice seemed
to be coming from inside his head, not from her mouth. It rippled through
his body, liquefying his arms and legs, crumpling him to his knees, then
to the floor.

The part of his mind that governed fight-or-flight tried to inform
Elliot that he should scream—wanted to, in fact—but he didn’t have
access to that part of his brain. It was as though something outside him
had identified it, isolated it, and cut it off from being able to communicate.
Elliot floated on a cloud of luminous red mist and infinite space full of
flickering points of light.

His knees buckled and he fell backward. The base of his head struck
the concrete floor and he saw fireworks at the contact.

“
I only ever wanted you to love me
.” Donna’s voice shivered in his brain.
“
You never did. I always knew you didn’t. Will you love me now? I want you
inside of me, Elliot
.”

Elliot felt the blood thundering through his body. His cock was
harder than it had ever been, straining painfully inside his uniform pants.
Donna straddled his crotch and ground her pelvis against his erection.
His limbs were paralyzed, but he’d never been more sexually aroused in
his life. He tried to think, to focus, but his brain was disconnected from
every other part of himself, and his body was on fire with sensation. The
universe was composed of Elliot, his engorged cock, and Donna Lemieux
writhing on top of him, suddenly the most desirable woman—the most
desirable creature, male or female—he could imagine.

“Donna,” he whispered. Tears ran down his cheeks. “Donna . . . please
. . .”

When she placed her lips against his neck, the pressure of her sharp
teeth behind her frozen lips was the most erotic sensation he could
imagine. Even the sharp pain of those teeth slicing through the soft skin
below his jawline only stung for a moment, then the pain was replaced
by spreading heat he felt at every extremity. Seconds before he lost
consciousness, his body was wracked by the most shattering orgasm of
his life.

His last thought before blacking out was that he was sorry Jeremy
wasn’t there to see this
proof
that he really was a normal guy, and that the
past really was past.

Finn wasn’t sure
what woke him. The iridescent green hands of the
clock on his night table read two a.m. The clock itself ticked softly and
the house was deathly quiet.

Instinctively, he put out his hand beside his bed and felt for Sadie’s
head. Then he remembered that she wasn’t there, that she had been lost,
then come home, and was now sleeping in the kitchen. He was suddenly
possessed of a powerful need to see with his own eyes that she was there,
that their reunion hadn’t been some sort of fantastic dream that would
leave him heartbroken when he realized it was, in fact, just a dream. He
swung his legs over the side of the bed and reached for the light switch
and turned it on.

Sadie was sitting a foot from his bed staring at him, silent, unmoving.
At her feet was the red rubber ball.

Finn realized that she’d dropped it there. The sound of the ball
hitting his bedroom floor was what had woken him.

He rubbed his eyes and stared at his dog.

Sadie’s posture was not the posture of the broken thing that had
limped in through the back door a few hours earlier. The hydrogen
peroxide had clearly done its work, because the bite marks in Sadie’s
fur were already healing, even fading. Finn doubted there would even
be scars, at this rate. Maybe God really
had
been listening tonight when
he prayed for his dog’s life to be spared. He tried to remember the terms
of his part of the bargain, but realized that, whatever they were, he’d
honour them.

“Sadie, are you feeling better?” he whispered joyously. “You’re a good
girl. Sadie’s a
good girl
!” Almost as an afterthought he added courteously,
“Thank you, God. I appreciate it.” Finn patted the bed beside him, their
time-honoured signal for Sadie to jump up on the bed for a cuddle, or a
sleep. Sadie didn’t move. “Sadie, come up! Come up!” Finn said, more
loudly. He patted the mattress again. “Come up on the bed!”

Sadie lay down at his feet, keeping her distance from him. When
he reached out to pat her paw, she made a sound low in her throat,
somewhere between a whine and a growl. Finn pulled his hand back in
shock.

When he did, the Labrador’s tail swished back and forth, as though
she were telling him she would lay there beside him, but warning him not
to touch her. Sadie had never, ever growled at Finn. Not once.

“What is it, Sadie?” he said, alarmed. “Are you still hurt?”

Swish, swish, swish.

“Fine, Sadie.” He was somewhat mollified by the tail-wagging, which
said to him that whatever else was wrong, she still loved him, and was
likely still feeling the pain of her ordeal. He’d see how she was tomorrow—
she was going to the vet tomorrow, anyway, to check out the bites. Would
his parents ever be surprised at how much better she was looking. Maybe
they wouldn’t even need to go to the vet, after all. Miracles were obviously
at play, and Finn had a personal investment in them.

He switched off the light and fell back asleep to the comforting
sound of Sadie’s soft breathing from the place on the floor from which
she never once moved all night.

On the last morning
of his childhood, Finn woke up in his bed exactly
as he always had. He yawned and stretched as he always did. He looked
at his clock, figured that his parents were still fast asleep, and would
be for hours yet. He looked around for Sadie. She had moved from the
spot beside his bed and was now sitting on her haunches in the doorway
connecting his bedroom and the downstairs hallway.

“Good morning, Sadie,” he whispered. “How’s the good girl? Did you
have a good sleep?”

Sadie didn’t come to him as she usually did, but she wagged her tail
slowly back and forth.

Finn got out of bed and padded over to where she sat. It was dark
outside, but by the light of his bedside lamp, he beheld the miracle fruit of
his bargain with God: Sadie’s bites had entirely healed. Her fur was glossy
and black, and the patches of hair that had been torn out of her flesh
during the fight with whatever animal had done this to her had almost
completely grown back. She looked as she had looked three, maybe four
years before, when she had been much younger, almost a puppy again.

Indeed, a miracle. He thanked God again, just to make sure He’d
heard it the first time and knew how grateful Finn was for this second
chance with his beloved Labrador. He couldn’t wait to tell Morgan after
school later.

Sadie’s mouth hung slightly open, her brilliant white teeth lying
over her bottom lip, pink tongue quivering. She panted gently as though
she wanted to go outside.

At her feet was her red ball. She looked down at the ball, then back
at Finn. It was their personal signal for playtime, an instance of Sadie
training him rather than the other way around.

Finn smiled hugely, feeling as though his heart would burst with
the sheer euphoria of having her back, well and healed. “You want to go
outside, Sadie?” he said. “You want to go for a walk?”

Swish, swish, swish.

As he had every day when he took this walk in the late fall, Finn
dressed quickly and warmly. At the front door, he put on his coat and
boots, tucked the ball into his jacket pocket, and called Sadie. She trotted
up the stairs and followed him out the door into the pre-dawn darkness
of Parr’s Landing.

He looked up and breathed the cold, clean air deep into his lungs.

For the rest of his life, Finn would remember the particular clarity of
that morning sky: Venus still visibly glowing in the western reach above
the ridge of cliffs on the far edge of the horizon, past Spirit Rock; the
stars, hard like jewels; the variegated shades of dark blue that hinted at
the coming sunrise. He would remember how he skipped and ran with a
buoyancy so pure that the pavement itself seemed to release him from
the constraints of anything as pedestrian—or adult—as gravity, with
Sadie trotting ahead, her black body a barrel-shaped shadow bobbing
over the pavement on legs that were remarkably delicate and slender for
such sturdy work.