Donna Tartt - The Little Friend

He was scary, smelly, huge. Harriet—gasping, practically weeping with terror—clattered down towards the water. His shadow fell across the open trapdoor, blocking out the sun. Clang : ugly motorcycle boots stepped on the ladder overhead. Down he came after her, clang clang clang clang

Harriet turned and threw herself off the ladder. She hit the water feet-first. Down she plunged, into the dark and cold, down until her feet struck bottom. Sputtering, gagging from the filthy taste, she pulled back her arms and shot up to the surface in a mighty breaststroke.

But just as she broke the surface, a strong hand closed fast on her wrist and hauled her up out of the water. He was chest-deep in the water, holding on to the ladder and leaning out sideways to grasp her by the arm, and his silvery eyes—glowing light and powerful in his sunburnt face—pierced her like a stab.

Flailing, twisting, fighting as hard as it was possible for her to fight and with a strength she’d never known she had before, Harriet struggled to get away but though she raised a tremendous spray of water it was no use. Up he hauled her—her waterlogged clothes were heavy; she could feel his muscles trembling from the strain—as Harriet kicked fan after fan of nasty water up into his face.

“Who you?” he shouted. His lip was split, his cheeks greasy and unshaven. “What you want with me?”

Harriet let out a strangled gasp. The pain in her shoulder was breathtaking. On his bicep squirmed a blue tattoo: murky octopus shape, a blurred Old English script, illegible.

“What are you doing up here? Speak up!” He shook Harriet by the arm until a scream burst unwilling from her throat and she kicked around desperately in the water for something to brace herself on. In a flash he pinned her leg with his knee and—with a high, womanish cackle—caught her up by the hair of the head. Swiftly, he pushed her face down into the filthy water and then hauled her up again, dripping. He was trembling all over.

“Now answer me, you little bitch!” he screamed.

In truth, Danny trembled as much from shock as anger. He’d acted so fast he hadn’t had time to think; and even though the girl was in his grasp, he could hardly believe it.

The girl’s nose was bloody; her face—rippling in the watery light—was streaked with rust and dirt. Balefully, she stared at him, all puffed up like a little barn owl.

“You’d better start talking,” he shouted, “and I mean now .” His voice boomed and ricocheted crazily inside the tank. Sunbeams filtered in through the dilapidated roof, breathing and flickering heavily on the claustrophobic walls, a sickly, remote light like a mine-shaft or a collapsed well.

In the dimness, the girl’s face floated above the water like a white moon. He became aware of the fast, small noise of her breaths.

“ Answer me ,” he screamed, “what the hell are you doing up here,” and he shook her again, as hard as he could, leaning out over the water and holding tight to the ladder with his other hand, shook her by the neck until a scream burst from her throat; and as tired and frightened as he was, a surge of anger twisted through him and he roared over her cries so ferociously that her face went blank and the cries died upon her lips.

His head hurt. Think , he told himself, think . He had her, all right—but what to do with her? He was in a tricky position. Danny had always told himself he could dog-paddle in a pinch, but now (chest-deep in water, hanging on to the flimsy ladder) he wasn’t so sure. How hard could it be, swimming? Cows could swim, even cats—why not him?

He became aware of the kid, craftily, trying to ease out of his grip. Sharply he caught her up again, digging his fingers deep into the flesh of her neck so that she yelped out.

“Listen here, prissy,” he said. “You speak up right quick and tell me who you are and maybe I won’t drownd you.”

It was a lie, and it sounded like a lie. From her ashy face, he could tell that she knew that, too. It made him feel bad because she was just a kid but there wasn’t any other way.

“I’ll let you go,” he said, convincingly he thought.

To his annoyance, the girl puffed out her cheeks and settled down into herself even further. He jerked her into the light so that he could see her better and a beam of sunlight fell across her white forehead in a clammy streak. Warm as it was, she looked half-frozen; he could practically hear her teeth clacking.

Again he shook her, so hard his shoulder hurt—but though the tears streamed down her face, her lips were clamped tight and she didn’t make a sound. Then, suddenly, from the corner of his eye, Danny caught sight of something pale floating in the water: little white blobs, two or three of them, half-sunk and washing in the water near his chest.

He drew back—frog eggs?—and the next instant screamed: a scream that astonished him, that boiled up high and scalding from his very bowels.

“Jesus Christ!” He stared at what he was seeing, unable to believe it, and then up at the top of the ladder, at the shreds of black plastic hanging in ribbons from the top rung. It was a nightmare, it wasn’t real: the drugs spoilt, his fortune gone. Farish dead, for nothing. Murder One if they caught him. Jesus.

“You done this? You ?”

The kid’s lips moved.

Danny spotted a waterlogged bubble of black plastic floating on the water, and a howl broke from his throat like he’d stuck his hand in the fire. “What’s this? What’s this?” he screamed, forcing her head to the water.

Strangled reply, the first words she’d spoken: “A garbage bag.”

“What you done to it? Huh? Huh?” The hand tightened on Harriet’s neck. Down—quick—he plunged her head to the water.

Harriet had just enough time to breathe (horrified, eyes starting at the dark water) before he pushed her under. Bubbles charged white before her face. Soundlessly, she fought, amidst phosphorescence, pistol shots and echoes. In her mind, she saw a locked suitcase clatter along a riverbed, thump thump, thump thump , swept by the current, rolling end over end over smooth mucky stones, and Harriet’s heart was a struck piano key, the same deep note thumped sharp and urgent, as a vision like scratched sulfur flared behind her closed eyelids, a white Lucifer-streak leaping in the dark—

Pain tore through Harriet’s scalp as splash , up he jerked her, up by the roots of the hair. She was deafened by coughs; the din and echo overwhelmed her; he was shouting words she couldn’t understand and his face was stony red, swollen with rage and fearful to see. Retching, choking, she beat the water with her arms and kicked out for something to brace herself against, and when her toe struck the wall of the tank, she drew a full, satisfying breath. The relief was heavenly, indescribable (magical chord, harmony of the spheres); in she breathed, in and in until he shrieked and pushed her head down and the water crashed in her ears again.

Danny gritted his teeth and held on. Fat ropes of pain twisted deep in his shoulders, and the screeching and bouncing of the ladder had broken him out in a sweat. Against his hand, her head bobbed light and unstable, a balloon that might slide from beneath his hand at any moment, and the kicking and churning of her body made him seasick. No matter how he tried to brace himself, or settle into his position, he couldn’t get comfortable; dangling off the ladder, with nothing solid under him, he kept kicking his legs around in the water and trying to step on something that wasn’t there. How long did it take to drown somebody? It was an ugly job and twice as ugly if you were doing it with only one arm.