Full Dark, No Stars

“No!” she growled in her Bonnie Tyler voice. “No!”

She came back a little. She felt a strong urge to stay crouched in the bushes, but that was no good. It wasn’t just a long time until daylight, it was probably stil a long time until midnight. The moon was low in the sky. She couldn’t stay here, and she couldn’t just keep… blinking out. She had to think.

Tess picked the piece of carpeting out of the ditch, started to wrap it around her shoulders again, then touched her ears, knowing what she’d find. The diamond drop earrings, one of her few real

extravagances, were gone. She burst into tears again, but this crying fit was shorter, and when it ended she felt more like herself. More in herself, a resident of her head and body instead of a specter floating around it.

Think, Tessa Jean!

Al right, she would try. But she would walk while she did it. And no more singing. The sound of her changed voice was creepy. It was as if by raping her, the giant had created a new woman. She

didn’t want to be a new woman. She had liked the old one.

Walking. Walking in the moonlight with her shadow walking on the road beside her. What road? Stagg Road. According to Tom, she had been a little less than four miles from the intersection of

Stagg Road and US 47 when she’d run into the giant’s trap. That wasn’t so bad; she walked at least three miles a day to keep in shape, tread-mil ing on days when it rained or snowed. Of course this was her first walk as the New Tess, she of the aching, bleeding snatch and the raspy voice. But there was an upside: she was warming up, her top half was drying out, and she was in flat shoes. She had

almost worn her three-quarter heels, and that would have made this evening strol very unpleasant, indeed. Not that it would have been fun under any circumstances, no no n—

Think!

But before she could start doing that, the road brightened ahead of her. Tess darted into the underbrush again, this time managing to hold onto the carpet remnant. It was another car, thank God, not

his truck, and it didn’t slow.

It could still be him. Maybe he switched to a car. He could have driven back to his house, his lair, and switched to a car. Thinking, she’ll see it’s a car and come out of wherever she’s hiding. She’ll wave me down and then I’ll have her.

Yes, yes. That was what would happen in a horror movie, wasn’t it? Screaming Victims 4 or Stagg Road Horror 2, or—

She was trying to go away again, so she slapped her cheeks some more. Once she was home, once Fritzy was fed and she was in her own bed (with al the doors locked and al the lights on), she

could go away al she wanted. But not now. No no no. Now she had to keep walking, and hiding when cars came. If she could do those two things, she’d eventual y reach US 47, and there might be a store.

A real store, one with a pay phone, if she was lucky… and she deserved some good luck. She didn’t have her purse, her purse was stil in her Expedition (wherever that was), but she knew her AT&T

cal ing-card number by heart; it was her home phone number plus 9712. Easy-as-can-beezy.

Here was a sign at the side of the road. Tess read it easily enough in the moonlight:

YOU ARE NOW ENTERING COLEWICH TOWNSHIP

WELCOME, FRIEND!

“You like Colewich, it likes you,” she whispered.

She knew the town, which the locals pronounced “Col itch.” It was actual y a smal city, one of many in New England that had been prosperous back in the textile-mil days and continued to struggle

along somehow in the new free-trade era, when America’s pants and jackets were made in Asia or Central America, probably by children who couldn’t read or write. She was on the outskirts, but surely

she could walk to a phone.

Then what?

Then she would… would…

“Cal a limousine,” she said. The idea burst on her like a sunrise. Yes, that was exactly what she’d do. If this was Colewich, then her own Connecticut town was thirty miles away, maybe less. The limo

service she used when she wanted to go to Bradley International or into Hartford or New York (Tess did not do city driving if she could help it) was based in the neighboring town of Woodfield. Royal

Limousine boasted round-the-clock service. Even better, they would have her credit card on file.

Tess felt better and began to walk a little faster. Then headlights brightened the road and she once more hurried into the bushes and crouched down, as terrified as any hunted thing: doe fox rabbit.