David Wiltse - The Edge of Sleep

Reggie looked at him. He was puffing out his chest, preparing for a battle. Just like a rooster. All strut and puff and bluster. “Oh, you did, did you?”

“I sure did.” He lifted his hand, waving currency in her face. “She’s paying two weeks in advance. In cash. I figure that entities her to as much privacy as she wants.”

Reggie took the money from his hand, counted it, and made an entry into the books. As if money had anything to do with it, she thought. It was all about control, and she knew that “Dee” knew it, too, even if George was too charmed to realize it. Money had nothing to do with it.

He was still spoiling for a fight. Nothing he’d like better, Reggie saw, than to tangle with her in defense of another woman. A rooster with his comb engorged and flaming. Well, she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.

“Well, that’s fine, then,” she said, closing the books as if that put a period to the discussion. As if some woman could keep her out of the cabins she owned and cared for and depended on her livelihood from just because she was full of piss and vinegar.

George was left with his fists balled for a fight and no one to swing at. She watched him with amusement as he tried to adjust. His relief almost outweighed his surprise.

“That show you like is coming on,” he said, glancing into their living room. “Come on and watch.”

Strutting out of the office, as if he were personally responsible for bringing her show onto the television. Little banty-legged bald-headed rooster, thinking he’d cowed the world with his crow. Well, hens laid eggs with or without a rooster. Everyone knew that-except maybe the roosters.

Ash lay on the backseat of the car, hidden under the blanket. The blanket was coarse and cheap, stolen long ago from some motel or other, and it had been used for a dozen purposes over the years, every one of which Ash could smell when the itchy cloth covered his face and nose. There was the odor of grease and oil upon the blanket, the smell of the spare tire against which the blanket was usually stored in the trunk of the car, the scent of grass, and even of Dee herself, who had often been wrapped in the blanket while she lay inert and mournful during her bad times. Ash could catch whiffs of himself, not only now but from the other times he had hidden under here, waiting for Dee to give the signal to come out.

And he could smell the boys. Their young bodies, their fresh skins. Their fear.

On one of the nature shows Ash had seen a wolf spider that built itself a den, complete with a camouflaged opening. When the spider’s prey approached too closely to the mouth of the den, the spider popped out and grabbed it, sucking it back into the lair in an instant. Ash had watched the show with fascination, wondering how the spider knew how to do what it did, how it knew that something edible would ever come by, how it knew the method to construct its elaborate web and den. He knew that he could never do anything that intricate himself.

“It just does it by instinct,” Dee had said. “It doesn’t know what it’s doing.”

But that was no explanation for Ash. He would not have known what he was doing, either, and he was certain he had no instinct to guide him through anything so elaborate.

And why was it called a wolf spider? Ash had seen wolves on other shows and they didn’t act at all like the spider. They hunted in packs and ran for miles and miles to catch their prey and only lived in holes when they had babies. There were always so many puzzles on the animal shows. Dee seemed to understand them all, even when she was attending only peripherally, dropping her comments in passing as she paced the room, but her explanations never helped Ash.

“They call it a wolf spider because of all that hair. It looks like fur,” she had explained. “Didn’t you hear him say that? I heard it and I wasn’t even listening.”

Ash hadn’t heard because he was so busy watching, but even if he had he would not have understood. Rabbits had fur, too. So did mice. Why didn’t they call it a rabbit spider? He loved to watch the shows, anyway.

Now, as he lay under the blanket in the back of the car, he thought of the wolf spider. Was this what it felt like as it waited for something to walk by close enough to grab? Was it a little bit scared, as Ash was? And excited, but sad, too, about what it would have to do? Did it get nervous?

Ash wanted to go to the bathroom, it seemed to be taking Dee so long. It always seemed to take her too long, but she said that was just because he was anxious. He knew he didn’t dare to leave the car to find a toilet. He didn’t even dare to sit up and look to see if Dee was coming.

“That’s all we need,” Dee had told him. “You lifting up from the backseat like a periscope. That wouldn’t look funny, would it?”

He knew she didn’t mean funny to laugh at, although Ash thought the vision of himself as a periscope was very comical.

There was to be no going to the bathroom, no peeking above the seat, no moving at all just in case someone happened to wander by and glance into the car.

Ash told himself he was the wolf spider. It wasn’t twitching around in its den while it waited. He had seen it. It stood like a statue, all its legs bent and ready to spring, its huge eyes peering straight ahead. The camera must have been right on top of it, but it didn’t twitch a muscle, not a hair on its body moved. If it had to go to the bathroom, it just didn’t, that’s all.

He heard footsteps approaching and opened his hands under the blanket to be ready to grab. His fingers were just like all of those spider’s legs, he thought, taut and poised.

He heard the door open, felt the weight of a body on the seat. Ash sprang like the wolf spider, engulfing the boy immediately, covering his body with the blanket as he shed it from himself. Ash’s arms locked around the boy’s body and his hand clamped over the boy’s face, pressing the cloth onto his mouth.

The car was already in motion but Ash stayed below the windows, knowing he was not to be seen by anyone until they were safely away. He lay atop the boy, pinning him to the floor with the weight of his body but careful not to crush him.

After the first moment of attack Ash adjusted his hand, making sure it covered only the boy’s mouth and not his nose, too. That was the only time when they really struggled, when he was inadvertently smothering them. Otherwise they lay very still. Ash thought of the insects captured by the wolf spider. They hardly seemed to struggle at all as the spider wrapped them in silk. He thought of the inflated frog being swallowed by the snake, only its enormous eyes registering protest.

Ash understood that the spider turned its victim into a mummy with the silk, not only immobilizing it but preserving it for consumption at a later time. In a way that was what he was doing with the blanket. He wasn’t just preventing the boy from struggling. He was wrapping him up for storage.

Not that they were going to eat him, exactly. Ash thought. But Dee would drain the juices from him, in time. She would leave him dry and hollow.

“Don’t you hurt my beautiful boy,” Dee said. She sounded excited, merry, almost, as if it were Christmas and the package Ash held in his arms was the best one of all and just for her. And it was for her, of course. For her and Ash, too, but mostly for her.

The car was gathering speed, which meant they were away from the town center and heading toward the highway. Soon, with the roar and speed of the thruway to mask all sounds. Ash would be able to get up and unwrap the package. It wouldn’t matter if the boy yelled then; no one would hear him above the noise of traffic.

Then they would drive and drive; it didn’t matter where as long as it was on the thruway. They would drive the twenty miles to home and past it, just keep going, then turn and come back the other way, killing time until it was dark and safe to return to the motel under cover of darkness. Ash would wrap the boy in the blanket once more and rush him into the privacy of their room in a matter of seconds, too quick for anyone to see, too fast for the boy to scream or kick his way free.