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Authors: Richard Laymon

No Sanctuary (21 page)

BOOK: No Sanctuary
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“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.”

“Oh, hell yes.” She drank some more coffee. It was hot and good. “I could knock a ball a mile. I just couldn’t lay my mitt on it.”

“Do you still like to play ball?”

“You being a wiseguy?”

Jerry smiled and they lapsed into silence. It was getting darker now.

“And now? I mean, what do you do now?” he asked.

Here it comes. Story time again, folks.

“Do? In my spare time? Well, I don’t play bounce-or-fly, that’s for sure!”

Jerry raised his eyebrows. Did he detect a challenge in her tone? If so, he wasn’t sure he wanted to pursue the matter of her spare-time activities anymore. They had something good going here, and he didn’t want to mess up.

She winked, threw him a quizzical smile and said, “I scribble.”

“Scribble?”

“Sure. I scribble. Anything that comes to mind, really. Anything and everything. I have this wild, untamable imagination, and when I get bored with life, I just, well ... scribble ...”

“Okay. So you scribble. Do you often get bored?”

“Yep. Pretty often.”

“You bored now?”

Nope.

“Good. I would hate to think ...”

“Jerry. Stop it. I’m having a great time. You’re the perfect host,” she laughed. “And I couldn’t be less bored. Honestly. So please, let’s drop it.”

Jerry laughed. “As a matter of fact, I was thinking we might head over to a park sometime. I could pitch, you could hit.”

“Like after dinner some night? That’d be neat. Of course, if you’re into reliving childhood games, there never was anything as good as hide-and-seek. The hiding part, that’s what I liked. Forget being ‘it.’ I loved to run off and duck into places that were small and dark where they’d never find you. It was always a little scary if you found a good place. I remember how my heart used to pound. Like I was afraid I’d get grabbed by something while I was waiting.”

“It was always such a let-down,” Jerry said, “when they gave up looking.”

“Right. It’s not that you wanted to be found, but you didn’t want to be abandoned.”

“Remember what a drag it was when you’d hear your parents calling your name? You knew it was time to go in.”

“That’s one of the great things about being an adult. Nobody to stop your fun.” Gillian’s heart started pounding hard. “Speaking of fun,” she said through a tightness that had suddenly squeezed her throat.

Jerry raised his eyebrows and waited.

“Why don’t we go swimming?”

He beamed. “Hell, yes. What about your injury, though?”

“I’m just skinned a little. The water will probably feel good.”

“Great. But wasn’t your bikini wrecked?”

“I’ll go in in my skivvies.”

“Skivvies?”

“My bra and panties. If you will.” She shrugged and smiled.

 

She took a sip of coffee. She had trouble swallowing it. “That sound all right to you?”

“This is the same Gillian O’Neill who was here this afternoon and didn’t want to be seen in a bikini?”

“Not exactly,” she said. “This is a Gillian who’s gotten to know you better.”

“And who’s had a few mai-tais.”

“I’m perfectly sober. Somewhat sober. Besides, it’s dark now. Of course, if you’re too bashful ...”

“I’ll go in and get the towels,” he said. He took a final drink of coffee, then pushed his chair away from the table, got up, and went into the house.

Gillian was relieved that he’d left. She suspected that he’d gone for the towels as a ploy to let her undress in privacy. Decent of him. She had thought she would have to strip in front of him, and had rather looked forward to it, but this made it easier.

She stood up. With trembling hands, she unbuttoned her blouse and took it off. She folded it and placed it on the seat of her chair. Then she stepped out of her sandals. She lowered her shorts, stepped out of them, and dropped them onto her blouse.

The warm breeze roamed her body. She felt naked. Looking down at herself, she supposed that the black bra and panties were no more revealing than her bikini had been. Though the bra had lace cups, the darkness of the night prevented much from showing.

Still, she thought. This isn’t a bikini, this is undies.

Jerry might have been right about the mai-tais.

Too late to back down now.

Who wants to back down? she asked herself.

BOOK: No Sanctuary
3.84Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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