Wild Midnight (26 page)

After another long while her shock and panic finally began to subside. She lay where she was, with every nerve ending in her body straining for some change in the sounds around her. She was positive now that her first terrified reaction—that it was Beau Tillson—was wrong. For whatever mad reason, he couldn’t do this. But
who
? her mind cried. All she could think of was the row of little conjure dolls sitting on the shelf in her kitchen, smiling their clay smiles. They had been put there to watch over the road and keep away the bad things that came in the night. Mercifully, a blackness shut down over her mind.
 

Hours might have passed.
 

They were going more slowly now. The road was rougher, and Rachel rolled from side to side, clenching her body against the pain. Then the truck rolled to a stop and someone cut the engine. It was unbelievably silent.
 

Rachel waited. She was sweating furiously; the heavy covering over her body and the sack over her head trapped her heat, and she couldn’t seem to get enough oxygen into her straining nostrils. The more she labored, the more her heart pounded, the hotter and darker it became. She felt she was going to die, smothered by her own fear.
 

Then there were footsteps.
 

A voice said close by, “Sweet Jesus, Lonnie, you done killed her. She can’t get no air under there.”
 

Hands fumbled at the covering over her, then pulled at her feet. Her body was hauled painfully over the tailgate of the truck. She felt herself fall into air, hands grabbing her as her feet hit the ground. Another man said, “It’d take more’n a croker sack and an old dog quilt to do that. Lift up her feet.”
 

Whoever they were, she realized, terrified, they carried her between them, swaying and bumping. The one holding her trussed ankles carried them high over her head. He began to laugh. At every step it felt as if she might be dropped.
 

There was something wrong with the slurred voices of the men and the way they carried her. Her body twisted as they stumbled through sand on an incline. She heard them laugh stupidly again.
They were drunk
! Their heavily shod feet rustled grass and twigs as they careened downhill. The smell of the river was strong.
 

Rachel felt a rush of cold awareness so strong that it washed panic away completely. Little sharp-edged details, sounds, a current of air on her ankles and hands were etched into her consciousness. She was going to have to fight to stay alive.
 

They waded out into water. She could feel colder air, hear the rippling sounds of the shallows. Then she was lifted, swung out and dropped down into something. A boat. It rocked under her. At the same time the sense that there was someone else with them assailed her. A silent presence. There was a little water in the bottom of the boat. It promptly soaked through the back of her shirt and jeans. She had lost a shoe. Her sock was getting wet. She counted the movement of bodies as the boat rocked from side to side—one, two. Perhaps three. She heard the cough of a motor. It was tried several times before it purred into life. They began to move.
 

Minutes ticked by. At last the boat slowed, turned, then turned again, as if whoever was at the tiller was looking for something. Finally the motor shut down and they began to drift. The drunken voices seemed to be arguing in an illiterate low-country whine with words Rachel could not make out.
 

Then, as the boat rocked, she clearly heard a man’s voice: “I can’t find the goddamned high water shoal. You got us out in the channel, now you get us back.”
 

The boat bounced as bodies moved around in it. Rachel fought a new fear—that drunk as the men were, they’d over turn the boat and dump her into the dark, cold water. Her hands tied behind her, she was helpless. She’d drown. She stared into the darkness of the smelly sack pressing on her face, praying they wouldn’t kill her now, stupidly.
 

The boat bumped against something and came to a stop.
 

“C’mon honey,” a voice said in her ear. “Time to go.” They were hauling her out of the boat. Hands tugged at the sack covering her head and shoulders and it came off. Rachel blinked.
 

What light there was glimmered darkly over an expanse of water broken by blacker areas of mud and grass. It was a moment before she could realize they were somewhere in the river channels that ran through endless miles of mud bars and marsh grass. The face right in Rachel’s was that of a youngish man, swarthy, in a nylon windbreaker. He had longish hair. He put his hands over the front of Rachel’s shirt and clenched his fingers to squeeze her breasts painfully.
 

“I got plans for you, honey,” he grunted. “I’m going to have something out of you before we finish, you can bet your sweet life.”
 

A woman’s harsh shrilling cut between them. “Keep your hands off’n that poison dirt whore! Don’t touch them big ugly tits—she’s nothing but a whore, Lonnie, that’s all she is.” There was the sound of splashing water as someone waded to shore after them. “Roy, get him to quit!”
 

“You shut your mouth,” another man said harshly. “Noise carries over the damned water.” Then, to the man holding Rachel, he added, “Leave her alone, Lonnie, or I’ll kick your butt.”
 

But the brutal hands continued to roam over Rachel’s breasts. They managed to rip open the front of her shirt before the bigger man took her in his arms, then roughly shifted her to his shoulder. Her head banged against his back as he stepped into the wall of marsh grass around them.
 

“I’m going with you,” the woman panted. “You’re not going to do nothing to her. Not while I’m around!”
 

“Pull in the boat.” When the other man staggered around them the man who carried Rachel pursed under his breath. “Gawd, not like that, you’ll lose us the anchor.”
 

In that position, her arms tied behind her back, and straining upside down as she was being carried, Rachel lost track of what was happening. Marsh grass whipped around them, rivulets of the tide running underfoot. Her heart was pounding in her body as though it would explode through her ribs. They were all so drunk and dirty that the stench of their bodies made her gag. And it was dark—breathlessly, solidly dark inside the high, reedlike grass.
 

They were going to kill her, she was sure. Her mind reeled with the knowledge. Perhaps they would rape her first. That was what the woman was shouting about. But
why
? The tape sealed her mouth. She couldn’t scream. She couldn’t beg for her life. Nothing.
 

The man carrying Rachel stopped and let her slide from his shoulder. When she staggered he held her upright. The dark was close about them. The woman came rushing up and was on her like a wildcat, clawing at her face and hair.
 

“Whore! Whore!” The screams beat on her ears. “I know what he’s been doing to you! I seen him sneaking into your house, you bitch! I been driving by, I know what he’s been doing in your whore’s bed!”
 

Oh God
! She knew that voice now. It was Darla Jean’s.
 

The bigger man shoved the woman back. She careened into the man in the windbreaker, who stumbled drunkenly and sat down in the reeds.
 

The big man bent over Rachel. “Just stand still. You don’t want to get hurt, and I can hurt you bad.”
 

It was impossible to stand still; she was shaking so wildly her knees were threatening to collapse under her. When he untied her wrists they were so numb that Rachel could not even lift them. He unsteadily unfastened the remaining buttons of her shirt and pulled it off. He handed it to the woman, who circled them restlessly, her feet slipping in the mud.
 

“We’re going to show you what we do to poison dirt whores,” Darla Jean was yelling. “We know what you been doing with my lover!”
 

The big man reached around Rachel’s body, unfastened her brassiere and pulled it off. The damp night air was cold against her breasts. Her flesh turned cold deep inside her, colder than the damp sea air. Underneath the tape she whimpered.
 

The bigger man stood staring at her, peering at the creamy shine of her breasts in the dark. “My gawd, Lonnie’s right. We oughta do something with all that.”
 

“Keep your hands off’n her,” the woman screeched. “You’re so drunk you can’t do nothing noways. Get her clothes off!”
 

Rachel sagged, but hands pulled her back upright. She felt a chilly dimness seep through her mind, fear dulling her senses as the men unfastened her jeans and pulled down the zipper. She wasn’t going to faint, she tried to tell herself. The big man dropped to a crouch to work the jeans and the nylon underwear panties down her legs. Darla Jean grabbed Rachel’s arms to keep her from falling, nails deliberately biting into her flesh as the ropes around her ankles were loosened and taken off.
 

“I ought to let them have you,” she rasped into Rachel’s ear. “I ought to let them beat you black and blue, you ugly redheaded whore!” The voice cracked madly. “You’re dead meat—dead meat! When we get through with you, ain’t nobody going to touch you no more.”
 

The other woman’s face was right in hers. Her sharp features were contorted, the mouth turned down to form a mask of demented hate. “I want her dead!” Darla Jean howled.
 

When she lunged at Rachel the bigger man pushed her away. “Dammit, you two ain’t got no sense. Shut up, Darla Jean! We don’t want no marks, they can tell if she’s been hurt. I ain’t going to spend no time, not for this. You said get rid of her, that’s all you said.”
 

“You ought to let me fix her up little,” the man in the windbreaker said thickly.
 

“Christ,” the other growled. “When the tide’s turned she’ll go out in the sound, the rip will get her. Even if she swims, t’won’t do no good.”
 

They were going to murder her
.
 

The man holding her said, “You don’t know it yet, sissy, but you done drowned while you was playing around nekkid in your swimming hole.”
 

Rachel moaned. The thought of them watching her there in the tidal pool, planning this, was horrifying. Darla Jean was circling them, crashing in the marsh grass, working herself up into a frenzy.
 

“He ain’t going to miss you,” she was howling. “Oh, I know that big devil better’n you, whore! ‘I need someone to belong to me,’“ she mimicked. “That’s what he told you—I know everything he does. You ain’t seen him nekkid in the light, have you? You don’t get no more than what I got, you cold-assed bitch. Well you’re
dead
, you’re going to drown! He won’t think about you no more!”
 

She threw herself at Rachel, but the bigger man caught her around the waist and held her. “Kill her now!” Darla Jean screamed.
 

Rachel went down on her knees in despair. In the darkness, in miles of dark tidal flats, they were leaving her to drown. Even when they left, even when she pulled the tape from her mouth, there would be no one around to hear her screams for help.
 

Please
, she begged them with her eyes.
 

The bigger shadow was saying, “C’mon, dammit. We’re going to be up to our asses in water if we don’t get out of here.”
 

Darla Jean was moaning crazily as the bigger man dragged her away. She heard the man in the windbreaker still protesting drunkenly that they ought to give him a few minutes alone with her. Rachel was left kneeling, naked, in the soft sandy mud. Then it was almost silent except for the whine of mosquitoes and the lap of water.
 

She sank back against her heels and for the first time raised her hands, and as slowly as a sleepwalker began to rub her wrists.
 

Darla Jean had done this because of Beau Tillson
.
 

Her still-dazed mind, exhausted, turned slowly. Darla Jean and the two men with her had planned it. They were leaving her to drown.
 

Slowly, each movement an agony, Rachel worked at the tape with her nails. Even peeling the strip back slowly a fraction of an inch each time, the skin of her lips came off with it. She felt the touch of something cold and looked down. It was dark in the wall of grass, but she knew the chill clasp of water. The tide was rising. What they had said was that they’d leave her naked in the marshes so when her body was found it would look as though she’d drowned, caught swimming in her tidal pool, and the river had carried her out.
 

In a little while, perhaps an hour, two hours, the thousands of jigsaw pieces of mud bars at the mouths of the Ashepoo River would be flooded with the salt flow of the sea. The current would seep through the shoulder-high grass in black water that filled the channels scoured by ebb and flood, too strong to swim, even if one knew which way to swim in the vast blackness.
 

The rivers of the Carolina coast, wide, brown slow-moving torrents with names like the Combahee, the Santee, the Wando, the Pee Dee, the Ashepoo, sank into great plains of marsh that were a wilderness for water birds and fish and alligators. Unless a person could see the shoreline it was a labyrinth.