Full dark,no stars

“I don’t know, either,” Betsy said, “but I know what the National Crime Victimization Survey says, because I googled it. Sixty per cent of rapes go unreported, according to them. Three in every five. I think that might be low, but who can say for sure? Outside of math classes, it’s hard to prove a negative. Impossible, really.”

“Who raped you?” Tess asked.

“My stepfather. I was twelve. He held a butter knife to my face while he did it. I kept still-I was scared-but the knife slipped when he came. Probably not on purpose, but who can say?”

Betsy pulled down the lower lid of her left eye with her left hand. The right she cupped beneath it, and the glass eye rolled neatly into that palm. The empty socket was mildly red and uptilted, seeming to stare out at the world with surprise.

“The pain was… well, there’s no way to describe pain like that, not really. It seemed like the end of the world to me. There was blood, too. Lots. My mother took me to the doctor. She said I was to tell him I was running in my stocking feet and slipped on the kitchen linoleum because she’d just waxed it. That I pitched forward and put out my eye on the corner of the kitchen counter. She said the doctor would want to speak to me alone, and she was depending on me. ‘I know he did a terrible thing to you,’ she said, ‘but if people find out, they’ll blame me. Please, baby, do this one thing for me and I’ll make sure nothing bad ever happens to you again.’ So that’s what I did.”

“And did it happen again?”

“Three or four more times. And I always kept still, because I only had one eye left to donate to the cause. Listen, are we done here or not?”

Tess moved to embrace her, but Betsy cringed back-like a vampire who sees a crucifix, Tess thought.

“Don’t do that,” Betsy said.

“But-”

“I know, I know, mucho thanks, solidarity, sisterhood forever, blah-blah-blah. I don’t like to be hugged, that’s all. Are we done here, or not?”

“We’re done.”

“Then go. And I’d throw that gun of yours in the river on your way back home. Did you burn the confession?”

“Yes. You bet.”

Betsy nodded. “And I’ll erase the message you left on my answering machine.”

Tess walked away. She looked back once. Betsy Neal was still sitting on the bench. She had put her eye back in. – 48 -

In her Expedition, Tess realized it might be an extremely good idea to delete her last few journeys from her GPS. She pushed the power button, and the screen brightened. Tom said: “Hello, Tess. I see we’re taking a trip.”

Tess finished making her deletions, then turned the GPS unit off again. No trip, not really; she was only going home. And she thought she could find the way by herself.

FAIR

EXTENSION

Streeter only saw the sign because he had to pull over and puke. He puked a lot now, and there was very little warning-sometimes a flutter of nausea, sometimes a brassy taste in the back of his mouth, and sometimes nothing at all; just urk and out it came, howdy-do. It made driving a risky proposition, yet he also drove a lot now, partly because he wouldn’t be able to by late fall and partly because he had a lot to think about. He had always done his best thinking behind the wheel.

He was out on the Harris Avenue Extension, a broad thoroughfare that ran for two miles beside the Derry County Airport and the attendant businesses: mostly motels and warehouses. The Extension was busy during the daytime, because it connected Derry’s west and east sides as well as servicing the airport, but in the evening it was nearly deserted. Streeter pulled over into the bike lane, snatched one of his plastic barf-bags from the pile of them on the passenger seat, dropped his face into it, and let fly. Dinner made an encore appearance. Or would have, if he’d had his eyes open. He didn’t. Once you’d seen one bellyful of puke, you’d seen them all.

When the puking phase started, there hadn’t been pain. Dr. Henderson had warned him that would change, and over the last week, it had. Not agony as yet; just a quick lightning-stroke up from the gut and into the throat, like acid indigestion. It came, then faded. But it would get worse. Dr. Henderson had told him that, too.

He raised his head from the bag, opened the glove compartment, took out a wire bread-tie, and secured his dinner before the smell could permeate the car. He looked to his right and saw a providential litter basket with a cheerful lop-eared hound on the side and a stenciled message reading DERRY DAWG SEZ “PUT LITTER IN ITS PLACE!”

Streeter got out, went to the Dawg Basket, and disposed of the latest ejecta from his failing body. The summer sun was setting red over the airport’s flat (and currently deserted) acreage, and the shadow tacked to his heels was long and grotesquely thin. It was as if it were four months ahead of his body, and already fully ravaged by the cancer that would soon be eating him alive.