The Night Visitors

Chapter Twenty-Four Mattie

I START TO reach for the gun, which I’d lain down on the floor, but I hear the click of a hammer being pulled back along with a soft tsk.

“I wouldn’t do that, darling, unless you want me to put a bullet through your head.” The man comes down the stairs, aiming the revolver straight at my forehead. I force myself to look away from him, glancing at Alice to see her staring at him with sheer hatred. Ah.

“Davis, I presume,” I say, turning my attention to the man’s face. He’s slight, in his mid-thirties, with feathery brown hair and a wispy goatee, wearing jeans and an unbuttoned flannel shirt over a Nirvana T-shirt. He looks like half a dozen interns I’ve trained over the years.

“No shit,” he snarls. Then he points the gun at Jason. “Who’s this asshole?”

The asshole himself answers. “Hey, man, this nosy bitch got up in my face defending a towel-head at the Stewart’s. She’s one of those nosy social workers. I came out here to teach her a lesson.”

“That so?” Davis asks, kneeling to pick up the other gun from the floor. He slides it into his back pocket, then pokes his gun in my face. “Is that what you get off on, bitch? Defending women from nasty men? Is that what you’ve been doing with my Allie? Cuddling her to your bosom?”

When he says bosom he moves the gun to my left breast. My skin crawls.

“Aw, you’re blushing! Have I figured out your big secret? As if all you ‘domestic abuse’ sob sisters”—he makes air quotes with both hands—“weren’t just dykes out for some damaged pussy.”

He points the gun at Alice’s groin and I can feel her tense beside me. He’s groping us with his words, and he’s had a lot of practice at it. But I’ve had practice dealing with this kind of man. “You sound like you’ve had experience with domestic violence services before,” I say.

He tilts back his head, revealing a scrawny neck pitted with acne, and laughs. “If by ‘domestic violence services’ you mean the legion of feminazis who like to butt their fat asses into a man’s business because they’re jealous they don’t have a man, then yes, I’ve encountered my share.”

I’m tempted to point out the inconsistency in his characterization of social workers as lesbians being jealous of not having a man, but I hear Doreen’s voice in my head suggesting I listen for the emotions beneath the words. “I can hear a lot of pain and loss in your voice,” I say.

He’s dead quiet for a moment, and I think maybe this could work. I’ve been trained to talk to people in crisis, after all. I just have to keep him talking until Frank gets here—

Then Davis swings back his arm and hits me on the side of the head with the butt of the gun. As I go over I hear Alice shriek and Jason snicker. A darkness swells in my head, black satin spreading over my eyes, and suddenly I’m in that basement cell at Hudson where they sent the bad girls for punishment. I can smell piss and mold and fear. I can hear the steps of the guard on the stairs, feel his arm on my arm—

No, please, I plead.

What’s the problem, sweetheart? This is what you were sent here for. I read your file. Making out with your boyfriend in the backseat of his daddy’s car. Little slut—

“No, please.” It’s not me pleading now; it’s Alice. I can’t make out all her words over the ringing in my ears but I hear the fear and desperation in her voice. It’s my voice all those years ago, pleading with the guard not to hurt me. But it didn’t work then and it won’t work now. Men like that guard and Davis feed on the powerlessness of women and children because they need to feel better than someone else. Someone made them feel weak once, and the only way they can make that feeling go away is by hurting a weaker person.

I open my eyes and try to focus on a spot ten inches in front of me, which turns out to be Jason’s ear. So he came out to teach me a lesson, did he? I bet he didn’t bargain on getting involved in this shit storm.

Jason looks back at me, then flicks his gaze up and down rapidly. I follow his downward movement to his waist and glimpse a wood-grained handle protruding from his pocket. A knife. I give Jason a terse and tiny nod, then inch my hand steadily toward his pocket.

As the ringing in my ears abates I can make out more of what Davis is saying now, something about how Alice has alienated his son’s affections and is a lying no-good cunt that he should never have taken in. Poor Alice is crying.

“You’re right,” Alice chokes out between sobs. “I made Oren come with me. It was all my idea. Just leave him alone.”

Poor Alice. She thinks she can protect Oren if she sacrifices herself.

“Where is the little shit, anyway?” Davis demands.

Where indeed? I wonder as my fingers touch the knife handle in Jason’s pocket. Hiding, I hope, in the old back stairs. Lucky I pushed back the boxes in front of them. Maybe he’s gotten up to the attic. A smart little kid like Oren could make himself vanish up there. Caleb always could. When my father was on the warpath Caleb could vanish for days. I used to worry that he would starve to death before he came out.

I curl my fingers around the knife handle—and realize as I do that I’ve still got that button Alice handed me. I’ve been gripping it in my clenched fist so tightly that it sticks to my palm even as I grab the knife. There was a design on the button that had jarred some memory, but I can’t think what now and it isn’t important. Still, I keep the button in my hand as I slip the knife out of Jason’s pocket and slide both knife and button into my own.

I hold my breath for a moment, afraid to look at Davis, praying that he didn’t see me take the knife. But no, he’s too busy berating Alice.

“. . . and I should have known that a piece of foster-care ass would have no respect for blood. Did you think you could be Oren’s mommy? That it didn’t matter that he’s my son?” Out of the corner of my eye I see Davis thump his chest with the same hand that’s holding the gun. “My son,” he says again, pounding his chest. “Mine.”

I’ve heard this before too, abusive men storming Sanctuary, demanding to know what we’ve done with my children, my wife, my family. I’ve stood my ground while they spit in my face. I’ve even felt a sliver of sympathy for them. They may have once loved that woman, those children, but something twisted inside them—some thread that got tangled in their own childhood, usually—and turned that love into a need to control. Now it’s all unraveling.

When they’re done yelling Doreen will step in and offer the men a cup of coffee. If they’ll sit down with her she’ll tell them about our anger management group. She’ll talk about the steps that might lead them back to their families. Most of the men tell her to go fuck herself, but a few have sat down with her, and one or two have actually joined the group and recovered.

No one is irredeemable, Doreen likes to say. I wish she were here now. She’d know how to talk to Davis.

“Tell me where he is,” Davis is yelling.

“Alice doesn’t know where he is,” I say, interrupting him.

Davis snaps his head around to me. “What did you say, bitch?”

“Oren is hiding,” I say, trying to keep my voice even like Doreen would. “There are dozens of places in this house where a smart kid like Oren could hide. He won’t come out as long as you’re yelling. If he sees that you’re calm, that we’re all sitting around peaceably—say, in the kitchen—he might come out.”

Davis cocks his head to one side as if he’s considering what I’ve said. “Oh, really? What if I yell real loud like this: HEY, OREN!” He presses the barrel of the gun to my temple. “I’M GOING TO SHOOT THIS BITCH IF YOU DON’T COME OUT RIGHT NOW.”

“I don’t think that will work,” I say, praying it’s true. Hoping Oren doesn’t come out of hiding to keep Davis from shooting me. “That’s only likely to make him more scared. But if we go upstairs to the kitchen—”

“What’s in the kitchen you want so much?”

Nothing, I think, wishing I’d hidden the gun there. “Just a pot of chili, candles and oil lamps, a woodstove. This house will get pretty cold soon without the furnace working. We’re all stuck here tonight. We could make a fire in the woodstove, heat up that chili, show Oren that everything’s okay.”

“Why, you make it sound real cozy,” Davis croons.

The thought of sitting around the woodstove eating chili with this asshole turns my stomach, but I swallow my own bile. “The alternative is freezing to death,” I say as flatly as I can.

“Hmm.” Davis looks around the basement, taking in the cold furnace, the shelves, the boxes—his eyes go right past them, I’m relieved to see—and light on the still-open Bilco doors. “Well, that’s not going to help any. Hey, asshole.” He nudges Jason with the barrel of the gun. “Is that how you got in?”

Jason nods. “Yeah.”

Davis strolls over to the Bilco doors, the gun dangling loosely from his hand, and reaches to pull them closed. If I could hit him over the head . . . I try to sit up, but my head swims. Jason hisses, “Cut my hands loose and I’ll jump the sonofabitch.”

Alice clutches my arm, digging her nails into my flesh. “He’ll kill us,” she rasps in my ear.

Davis turns back to us and grins. “Don’t think I don’t hear you guys whispering.” He waves the gun at us. “Mattie, darling, are you telling me you just left these doors unlocked? That’s plain careless. That shows an utter disregard for your own life, which I wouldn’t mind so much except that you had my boy under your care. Now let’s see . . . there must be a way to secure this entry . . .” He looks around and plucks a short board from a shelf, then shoves it between the handles on the Bilco doors, effectively sealing them from the inside. Satisfied, he walks back to us and points the gun at Alice. “Help her up,” he barks, directing the gun toward me. “And don’t even think about trying anything, bitches, or I’ll put a bullet in both your brains. We’re going to do as our hostess suggests and have a cozy meal by the fire upstairs. Then we’re going to have a little talk.”

Alice helps me up. As I clutch her hand I press it against the knife in my pocket so she knows it’s there. I see her eyes widen. Davis has shifted his gaze to Jason, though, so he doesn’t notice.

“Should I help him up, too?” Alice asks.

He cocks his head, considering the man on the floor. “Nah,” he says, “too much trouble.” Then he shoots Jason in the head.