Stranglehold. Part 1

STRANGLEHOLD.

by Jack Ketchum.

Prologue.

Legacy.

Ellsworth, New Hampshire.

Easter 1953.

Enough, she thought.

G.o.dd.a.m.n it, that's enough.

The baby cried.

The baby wanted the nipple. Or the baby wanted to be held. Or else the baby had s.h.i.t or p.i.s.sed itself or maybe it wanted to p.i.s.s or s.h.i.t on her, maybe it was holding it, storing it up inside, waiting for her to come check its diaper so it could blow its filth out into her face. It had done that before.

She got out of bed and walked to the crib. The man slept on.

She picked the baby up and felt its diaper. The diaper was dry. She bounced the baby up and down. It cried some more.

Well, it wasn't getting the nipple.

Her nipples were already sore.

She was still a good-looking woman. She was going to stay that way.

Tomorrow you go on the bottle, she thought. I don't care what the doctors say.

I can do whatever I want with you, she thought.

You know that? You're mine.

She was still a little woozy from all the port wine after dinner. Her head hurt. She wasn't much of a drinker. Except lately. Right now she wanted nothing more than to get back into bed and sleep it off, but no, she had to deal with the baby again. Every night the same d.a.m.n thing. Every night the baby. Her husband never woke. Once or twice maybe but then all he did was roll over and tell her that the baby was crying, as if she didn't know that already, as if she wasn't lying there waiting the baby out.

Well, if the baby didn't have to pee, she did.

She took the baby with her, thinking that maybe just carrying it back and forth would put it back to sleep. You never knew.

She padded down the hall to the bathroom and pulled up her nightgown and squatted, the baby in her arms, its face splotched angry red, its mouth open wide and the noise coming at her filling the tiny room, nonstop, unrelenting. She smelled her own strong urine and the baby's warm peculiar fleshy smell and the smell of its crying.

Some people liked a baby's smell.

She didn't.

To her the baby didn't even smell human.

When she stood up and flushed, the baby screamed.

Really screamed.

She shook it. "Jesus Christ," she said. "Will you for G.o.d's sake shut up?" The baby cried. She felt a hot wind blow inside her. I'll shut you up, she thought.

No more.

She lifted the toilet seat and took hold of the baby's feet, turned it upside down and thought, am I really going to do this? Am I? And the answer was d.a.m.n right I am, I'm up to here with screaming whining sucking drooling p.i.s.sing s.h.i.tting I'm up to G.o.dd.a.m.n here with all of it.

She lowered its head into the water.

And held it there.

Bubbles.

Squirming.

Pathetic, puny.

Coughing.

Weakening.

The baby dying.

Her baby.

Oh jesus oh jesus G.o.d oh jesus.

She pulled it out dripping wet, its tiny eyes wide, astonished, its mouth open wide streaming water from the bowl and there was silence, for a horrible moment it simply wouldn't breathe, its mouth was open but nothing was happening and then she started patting it, slapping its back and it started coughing and then screaming like she'd never heard it or anything scream before, staring at her wide-eyed all the while like he was seeing her there in front of him for the first time, staring straight into the sick wild soul of her so that she had to hug him close if for no other reason than to get away from his eyes, from that astonished accusation, holding him tight to her, thinking what did I do? what in G.o.d's name did I do? and saying to him baby, baby baby.

One.

Children.

Wolfeboro, New Hampshire.

June 1962.

The little girl had quit pounding at the door. It wasn't doing any good.

She couldn't even hear them outside anymore.

The cabin smelled of earth and old decaying wood heavy in the damp still air. It was nearing dark. The light through the cracks in the windowless walls grew dimmer and dimmer.

They'd wedged something into the door frame, a piece of wood or something, and she couldn't budge it. She sat huddled against the sweating, slimy wall, smelling wet clay soil and the rich musky smell of her own tears and thought, n.o.body will find me.

She imagined them out there in the swamp water somewhere, maybe half a mile away by now-it was possible-slogging through shallow black water and mud that could suck your galoshes off, stabbing at frogs with their two-p.r.o.nged metal spears. Jimmy would have a few by now dead or dying in his bucket. Billy was not as quick as Jimmy and might have come up empty.

You gotta see this, they'd said. This's cool.

The old log hunter's cabin lay out there in the middle of nowhere, what her daddy called a misbegotten construction that for years had been slowly sinking into the bog. n.o.body used it for hunting now.

Liddy was only seven.

She hadn't wanted to go inside.

The boys, Jimmy and Billy, were nine and ten. So why should she have to go in first?

Why was it always her?

She was thinking that but stepping through the open door anyway because they were boys and she couldn't let them know she was scared, when Jimmy pushed her in and hooted with laughter and one of them held the door closed while the other wedged something between the door and its frame and trapped her.

She pounded. Screamed. Cried.

She heard them out there laughing at her and then heard them sloshing through the water.

Then she heard nothing at all. Not for a long time.

She sat huddled by the door, staring down at the earthen floor and wondered if snakes came out at night and if they did would they want to get in here.

She bet it was supper time.

Daddy'd be mad again.

Her mom would worry.

"Come on. Please," she said to n.o.body at all, "let me out. Pleeeese!"

All that accomplished was to start her crying again.

The guys all talked about what happened up here after nightfall. They talked about it all the time. Everybody knew.

Murderers used this place. Escaped crazy people who liked to do things to kids.

Especially little kids.

Liddy hated Billy and Jimmy.

She wished they were dead. Then she wished she were dead.

Because she'd disobeyed again.

She should never have come along.

Her mom and her daddy both had warned her against the place. You're not to go there under any circ.u.mstances her mom had said.

But there were not many kids around and no girls at all to play with and you had to have somebody. And sometimes Billy and Jimmy were nice to her. Sometimes she'd get through an entire day without getting pushed or pinched or hit.

Like she was really somebody's sister.

So she'd told them okay even though she knew it was probably going to turn out wrong someway, even though she had to trust the boys completely, depending on them to even get her up here because it was way off the trail and she'd never even seen this part of the woods before.

She was actually kind of ... lost.

Even if she got out of here.

She thought that if she had to stay here all night she'd go crazy.

There was a story Jimmy told about the swamp.

He said his older brother Mike had been up here alone a long time ago and he'd seen something in the water, that it had looked like a log at first but when Mike came closer he saw it was a man, a dead man with half his face chopped off-cut absolutely, completely clean from head to chin so that one open eye was staring at him, the other eye gone, half the nose split right down the middle and half the mouth open in a great big O so that Mike said the guy looked sort of surprised more than anything else and in the back of the head he could see this mess of brain and blood and bone. He ran for the police and brought them an hour later to the very same spot, but by then the guy was gone. The guy had disappeared. They looked everywhere.

Jimmy was a liar and so was his big brother Mike but Jimmy always said that now the guy haunted the place. That you could hear him at night moaning through half a mouth, breathing heavy through half a nose, dragging himself through the dirty snake-, frog-, and leech-infested water.

It was only a story.

But if she stayed here all night she'd go crazy. She was trembling all over.

It was getting dark.

"Mommy," she whispered.

She heard footsteps. Sloshing through the mud. Coming toward her.

"Mommy," she said.

Thinking about the dead man.

Not help but mommy.

Her long brown pigtail caught on rough weathered wood as she slid away from the door, her scalp burning as a clutch of hair pulled free. She got to her feet and ran to the wall farthest away. She felt tiny splinters of the old rotten wood nip the palm of her hand. She pressed back against it anyway, facing the door.