Bill Pronzini - The Stalker

No reason, none at all...

Abruptly, then, his legs moved, carrying him forward, past Mrs. Yarborough, almost knocking her down. He hit the stairs running.

Because maybe, just maybe, dear God, just maybe Andrea was still alive!

She lay huddled foetus-like, cold and afraid on the floor of the storage closet, lay in the Stygian blackness and listened to the vague, muted sounds of wind and rain, and to the imagined gnawings of a dozen rats in the mud beneath the shack’s rough wood flooring. The nylon fishing line which bound her hands and her ankles was mercilessly taut, and her splayed fingers were numb against the cross-grained boards of the rear wall behind her. The strip of cloth which had been tied tightly, painfully, across her mouth tasted of grease, of must, of darkly crawling microbes.

She had been in there less than an hour.

She had harbored the idea, at first, of trying to kick down the closet door—the wood was old and very dry, and the hasp was somewhat rusted—and then crawling into the other room and finding a sharp knife or breaking a glass and using one of the shards to cut the nylon line. But the closet space was cramped, allowing no room for maneuverability, for leverage; if she had been a man, with a man’s strength and stamina, with a man’s bravery, she might still have been able to do it. But she wasn’t, she was a small frightened woman, and she could only lie there, shivering in the darkness, waiting, waiting for him to come back, waiting for the nondescript, innocuous-looking man who walked with a noticeable limp.

And who had the eyes of a madman.

Andrea began to tremble again as she thought about those eyes. They were wide, penetrating, soulless; they looked through you, burned holes in you; they contained something indefinably but unmistakably terrifying. She had almost fainted the first time she’d seen them in the illumination from the Coleman pressure lantern, seen how the black, black pupils reflected the light and gave the impression of flames dancing and flickering deep within their inner recesses.

In that moment, she had fully expected him to kill her.

After performing unspeakable atrocities on her flesh.

But he hadn’t touched her, except to slap her once very hard with the palm of his left hand when he had broken in, commanding her as he did so to stop screaming. When she had complied, he had told her in a flat, toneless voice that nothing would happen to her if she was quiet and responsive—not elaborating what he meant by responsive—and that was when he had put on the Coleman lantern and she had seen his eyes. She had had to exercise a tremendous effort of will to keep from panicking at that moment, to keep from screaming again, but she had done so, sitting on the Army cot and pulling the wool blanket up to cover her body even though she was clad in heavy lemon-colored pajamas. He had only nodded, and then had dragged in one of the chairs from the half-table and sat down on it facing her, crossing his legs and holding the gun very loosely, very casually on his knee, watching her, not speaking for a long while.

Who was he, who was he? The question had echoed and re-echoed in Andrea’s mind as she sat before him, not looking at his eyes. Was he a madman, an escaped mental patient from some institution? She had tried to remember if there were any hospitals for mentally unbalanced people, any asylums, in the vicinity; but she didn’t think there were, it wasn’t likely. Was he an itinerant, a tramp? She had heard stories about hobos and drifters riding the northbound freights that rolled frequently by on the spur tracks a half-mile distant, about how they sometimes jumped off in isolated areas such as this one and went looking for food and shelter and money and . . . other things. But this man was too well-dressed, too well-groomed, too calm and systematic to be a tramp, to have been riding in a freight car. But who was he, then? Who else could he be? What did he want? What was he going to do?

He had said suddenly, “Where’s your husband, Mrs. Kilduff?”

It had surprised her. It had surprised her enough so that she hadn’t immediately been able to reply. He had asked the question again, with menace, with impatience, and she’d managed at length, “I ... don’t know where he is. Why? Why do you want to know where he is?”

“He isn’t staying here with you?”

“No”

“Then why are you here?”

She hadn’t been able to lie to him, hadn’t been able to hedge an answer. It was his eyes, those omniscient eyes. “Because I... I’ve left him.”

No visible reaction. “How long have you been here?”

“Since . . . last Saturday.”

“Does Orange know you’re here?”

“... Orange?”

“Your husband.”

“No, no... I don’t think so.”

“When was the last time you spoke to him?”

“Last Friday,” Andrea said. “Please, what do you want with Steve? Do you know him?”

“I know him,” the limping man had answered, and that had been all he’d said, lapsing into silence then, a silence which she hadn’t been capable of breaking even though her mind was seething with new questions, new fears.

He had called Steve “Orange”; she’d heard him dearly. What did that mean? Was it some kind of nickname? Did he have Steve mixed up with someone else? No, that wasn’t it; he had called her “Mrs. Kilduff” and he had come here to Duckblind Slough. He must have known Steve rather well—not many people were aware of the existence of this shack. But why had he thought Steve would be here now, in November? And how could her husband know a man like this, a man with insane eyes, a man who carried a gun? And what possible reason could this man have for wanting to locate him? To . . . dear Lord, to kill him? That would explain why he had the gun, but . . . no, that was crazy, why would anyone want Steve dead? It was a nightmare, this whole thing was a nightmare . . .

Time had passed, crawling. She had lost control momentarily, with the questions and the fears commingling in her brain, and had begun to cry. She’d sat on the cot, rocking to and fro, and the tears had fallen, cascading from her eyes. The limping man had said nothing, watching her, until there were no more tears and she was silent again. He’d seemed to be deeply immersed in thought, in some private and hideous contemplation.

Dawn had come, finally, diminishing the long shadows within the shack slowly, consuming the darkness until Andrea had been able to see through the window that the sky was once again wet gray gossamer. What was he waiting for? she had thought then. If he was going to kill her, rape her, why didn’t he have done with it? Was he trying to torture her by making her wait, wait in silence, by giving her all this time to think about what would happen to her? It was inhuman—

Abruptly, as if he had reached some decision or formulated some plan, the limping man had gotten to his feet. He had held the gun pointed at her, moving to the storage closet, opening the door, peering alternately at what lay on the shelves inside and at Andrea sitting on the cot. He had taken the nylon fishing line down finally—new line wound carefully about a small wooden stake—and had instructed her to lie on her stomach across the cot with her hands clasped behind her. She had obeyed, sobbing again, tasting the fear in her mouth and in her throat, feeling it surge in her stomach.

He had put the gun into the pocket of his overcoat and methodically bound her hands and ankles. When he had finished, he’d picked her up, not straining under her weight at all, and carried her to the closet and placed her on the floor inside, where she now lay. His breath on her face had been fetid, though now she knew that fear and imagination had only made it seem that way.