Michael Koryta - Last Words

The beer had vanished from sight but now it returned to the coffee table and Cecil’s socked feet went into motion and the door was opened. His eyes took in the scene fast.

“Ridley,” he said. “What in the hell... Ridley, no, don’t—”

“Let us in.”

Cecil took a step back, too willingly, and Ridley saw that his eyes were drifting right, and so he released Julianne and stepped around her and punched Cecil once in the face and kicked him once in the groin, and the bigger man fell to the floor in gasping pain without ever reaching the shotgun leaning against the wall just to the right of the door.

“Your choice, Cecil,” Ridley said. He guided Julianne inside and closed the door behind them. Cecil was writhing on the floor.

“I know this is not the way it is supposed to go,” Ridley said, “but I’m going to need to get in to see her tonight. There simply is no other choice at this point. It has to be done.”

For a time Cecil didn’t answer, just gasped his way back to breath, a string of spit hanging from his lips. He got slowly to his hands and knees, looked up at Ridley, and said, “You stupid son of a bitch. You’ll end up in prison. Ten years free, and you’ll still end up in prison.”

“There’s a lot left to play out before that,” Ridley said, “though I acknowledge the possibility. I always have.”

Cecil breathed through his mouth, his eyes flicking around the room in search of options.

“Keep your attention on me,” Ridley said. “There’s no need to delay. I just need the keys.”

“All you had to do was wait, you freak,” Cecil said.

Ridley nodded with sorrow. “I tried to. You know that. But it was easier for you. You never had any questions. And if you did, they were about me. Now, imagine being me and having those same questions.”

“You’ll end up in Terre Haute waiting on the electric chair.”

“The keys,” Ridley said, beckoning with his hand. “Otherwise, you’ll watch everything that happens to her and it will happen in your home and before your eyes. And you will know that you made a choice that might have stopped it. You’ll live with that.”

Cecil rose unsteadily.

“I’ll give you the damn keys, though if you were only smart enough to wait, they’d have been yours anyhow. Now that will never happen. You understand that, don’t you?”

“Where are the keys?”

“Right behind your head. Hanging on the peg.”

“Get them for me.”

“They’re only a foot away from you.”

“Get them for me.”

Cecil shuffled forward, walking in pain, and extended his arm to reach around Ridley for the keys. When he made his next move, it was with speed that Ridley hadn’t anticipated. Cecil had been a fine athlete in his day, his name still in the Garrison High record books for tackles, and his muscle memory had lasted through the years — he got both arms around Ridley and drove him back into the wall. Julianne was trapped between them, in danger from Ridley’s knife, which was the reason he hadn’t been prepared for the assault. He’d expected Cecil would value her life more than this.

He couldn’t allow her to be hurt, not yet, not when they were so close to the place where he would need her, and so he dropped the knife and stumbled backward. All three of them hit the floor hard. Ridley rolled and Cecil did exactly what Ridley had expected and went after the shotgun. Ridley stepped over Julianne and grabbed the back of Cecil’s head just as he reached the gun. Rather than pulling him back, Ridley drove him forward and slammed Cecil into the wall. The shotgun clattered to the floor just as Cecil’s nose shattered.

Cecil threw a high, powerful elbow that might have found Ridley’s face if Cecil hadn’t slipped on the hardwood floor. This was why Ridley kept his boots on even in his own home. Traction was something you could never take for granted.

Cecil was a tall and muscular man, bigger and stronger than Ridley, but he did not have traction and he did not have momentum. Ridley banged Cecil’s face off the wall one more time and then threw him to the floor. It could have ended there, should have, but Cecil landed near the knife and made the mistake of reaching for it.

Ridley raised his boot and smashed it down on Cecil’s hand and felt the bones break. Cecil cried out and rolled away, clutching his wrist to his belly as Ridley picked up the open knife. He felt in control at that moment, aggressive but focused, the goal clear: incapacitate Cecil and enter the cave.

Two changes occurred. Fast. One: Cecil reached for the shotgun again, even after he should have known better. Two: The knife spoke to Ridley. It was open and in his hand. In its designed position. Ready to do what it was meant to do, but more than that, what it had already done on a night he could not fully remember.

Night, was it night? Maybe day. Darkness. Certainly darkness. Down there, all days become nights and neither matters. And you held the knife like this and you—

Cecil’s fingers scrabbled for the shotgun and missed. Ridley pulled the big man’s head back and saw wide white eyes, and then Cecil’s chin rolled up and back and his throat was exposed. Ridley was ready then, ready to slash the knife down to do what it was intended to do, what Ridley was intended to do, when Julianne howled from beneath the tape over her mouth. The trapped sound was soft but its intensity was not.

He looked back to where she lay on her side on the floor, a helpless spectator, and he saw only terror in her eyes. It was the way Ridley’s sister had looked at their father on many occasions. Whenever Ridley saw that look come into his sister’s face, he had interceded. It hadn’t gone well for him, ever, but he’d always done it.

Julianne took a gasping breath that made the tape over her mouth bubble, and the look in her eyes made Ridley cringe. All she saw was horror, and she blamed Ridley. She was afraid of him, and that was a standard part of his days now and had been for years, but it had never been desired. He had never wanted to cause fear. People feared him, yes, but it wasn’t a product of his intentions. Actions, perhaps, but never intentions.

He slid off Cecil Buckner’s back and swept the shotgun across the floor. Cecil didn’t struggle. His eyes were on the blade that had nearly carved through his throat.

“You can wait here in peace, or they can find your body,” Ridley said. “Now put out your hands.”

Ridley was even faster with the paracord this time, binding Cecil’s hands and then his ankles, then connecting the two with a fast hitch. There was no need to pull Cecil’s feet as close to the back of his head as Ridley did, but the knife was no longer involved, and it seemed that Cecil should be forced to consider that and appreciate it. His life had been saved by the look in a stranger’s eyes. Would he ever know that? Ever understand how close he had come? Ridley doubted it, and so he pulled the cord tighter, pulled until Cecil’s heels came close to the back of his skull, and his spine was pushing its limits. Cecil shrieked in pain and Ridley found the tape and wrapped it quickly over his mouth to silence that aggravating sound. When he was finished, Cecil was bound with his hands and heels pressed together, his body arched backward. The paracord cinched tighter as he struggled. Soon he would realize that. He would remain in that position until someone came to free him. Ridley hoped that it would take some time and that Cecil would use the time to think, but he wasn’t optimistic about that possibility.

He straightened and took the keys — there were three key rings on different pegs and he took them all — and considered the shotgun briefly but decided against it. A gun was not a caving tool, and when he entered Trapdoor, he wanted the cave to know that he was pure of heart.