7

“Don’t turn around. Don’t move. Don’t think. Just obey.” A male voice, barely above a whisper.

Dennis began to turn around. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the tip of a shotgun barrel poke its way into the young reporter’s ear. Dennis stopped turning and faced front.

“Hands on top of your heads.”

I complied. Dennis hesitated. Seconds later he pitched forward. His arms weren’t quick enough to break his fall and he slammed face-first into the log wall. Blood spurted from his nose.

“Now you’ve got it dirty,” whispered the voice.

Dennis whimpered.

The butt of the gun smashed down on the back of Dennis’s knee. He screamed in agony. I turned to help or fight or escape but got the barrel of the shotgun rammed under my chin.

What startled me into inaction, besides the whap from the shotgun and a gleaming revolver in Jasper’s other hand, was my first look at our captor. I was expecting a snaggletoothed behemoth in bib overalls.

What I saw was perhaps the most handsome man I had ever seen. GQ would rush to put his face on the cover and thousand-dollar suits on his body. His hair was slightly longer than a brush cut and parted neatly to the side. It gleamed with the rain. His eyes were brown and were shaded by beautiful long lashes—bedroom eyes. His jaw was firm, and the bottom half of his face had the kind of five o’clock shadow that some male models worked to achieve. He was just short of six feet tall, with broad shoulders and narrow hips. He wore a white T-shirt that was damp from the rain, and the fabric clung to his washboard-rippled stomach. He had on black nylon running shorts, cut up each thigh almost to the waistband, with white ankle-length sport socks and black running shoes. Put him in a commercial, and people would stampede to the stores to buy whatever he was selling. The fat little nerd Dennis remembered had long since been transformed.

He never spoke above a whisper.

He said, “Very slowly turn back around. The slightest swift movement and I will kill both of you.”

I turned slowly and faced the door.

My hands were seized and a pair of handcuffs applied. Must have taken five seconds, if that much.

“Open the screen door and walk in.” He nudged me in the back with the shotgun. Awkwardly, I turned sideways and grabbed the knob. I swung it open as far as I could and then caught it with my elbow. I stepped into the doorway. The rest of the cabin was as pristinely neat as the part I had seen from the porch. He prodded me in the back until I was halfway to the west wall of the cabin. “On the floor,” he ordered.

I lay down.

“Turn your head away from the door. If you move it this way, I will kill both of you.”

I complied. The corner of the cabin I stared into had one of those all-in-one exercise machines. Like everything else in the cabin, it gleamed as if it had been polished five minutes before. Behind it hung a Nazi flag. To the left of the flag was a five-foot-long aquarium. I thought it odd that it was devoid of water. I saw small mounds of sand with small logs on them. Then one of the logs moved. Snakes. I shut my eyes, and when I opened them I tried to avoid looking looking in the direction of the flag or the creatures.

I heard Jasper put his guns down. Several swift steps followed, and seconds later I felt sure hands grip my ankles. I kicked violently and by luck caught him in the nuts. It took me extra time to get to my feet because my hands were tied, and those few seconds were too many. Something hard crashed into the back of my head. I fell back and smacked my head on the floor. I felt woozy and dizzy. He tied my ankles with leather thongs.

“Don’t do that again,” he said. “Your death will be ever so much more unpleasant because of it, but remember, I could make it even worse.”

I watched him walk to the flag, stepping over the handgun on the floor, and lean the shotgun against the wall. He opened a drawer in the table on which the aquarium sat and pulled out a four-foot-long set of tongs. Then he dragged out what looked like a cane with a loop on the end.

He opened the glass lid of the snake pit, slipped the tongs in, and grabbed one of the vipers just behind the back of the head. He held the squirming beast at arm’s length.

Jasper said, “Time for a walk, Bob.”

I guess if you live in the middle of a ghastly swamp in Georgia and have guests in to torture, you might as well name your snake something, Bob being as good as any other moniker. I certainly was in no position to tell him it sounded supremely weird.

Bob coiled and writhed. He opened his mouth wide, and I saw acres of white, which framed vicious-looking fangs.

Jasper looped the rope-thing at the end of the cane just behind where Bob’s ears would have been, had he had ears. Then, holding the four-foot squirmer at arm’s length, Jasper took Bob and set him down so his head was a foot from my nose. Jasper took a metal pin out of the floor, inserted it through a hole in the far end of the cane, let it fall back into the hole in the floor, gave the end of the pin a twist, and stood up.

Bob could now move his head up to about six inches from my face and a foot or so to either side.

“In case you decide to hinder me, Bob will intervene. You’ve probably never been bitten by a cottonmouth before. It’s not pleasant.”

There are times in our lives—not many, it’s true—when a mad, blind panic seems like the only sensible option. Certainly this was well on its way to being one of those times. I couldn’t remember ever being this frightened. I breathed slowly and deeply, tried concentrating on any small opening that could give me an edge in fighting back. There didn’t seem to be a lot of those at the moment.

Jasper opened a cabinet and took out a scrub brush, cleaning fluid, and a sponge. I heard the screen door open and close. I guessed he was cleaning up Dennis’s blood from the cabin’s logs. He reentered, returned to the sink, cleaned the sponge, and replaced everything neatly where it belonged. I saw him pick up the guns, then heard his footsteps. The door swung open but did not close. I heard the click of handcuffs. Finally Jasper said, “Into the cabin.”

“I can’t move,” Dennis said.

“Then I will kill you here.” I heard a hammer pulled back. Must have been the handgun he held.

“Okay, okay, okay, okay.” Dennis sounded like he was crying. The subsequent whimpering and moaning I heard I took to mean Dennis had begun to move.

“No noises,” Jasper commanded.

For the next half-hour I heard the shuffle of a human being dragging himself across the floor. I heard rain pouring on the cabin roof, and saw Bob twisting and squirming at the end of his tether. Dennis couldn’t muffle all of his moans and sobs, but Jasper seemed content with the low decibel level of his captive’s agony. I didn’t hear Jasper’s footsteps, so I assumed he stood and watched, certainly made no move to help his victim.

The shuffle-shuffle noise stopped and Dennis said, “I can’t.”

Footsteps crossed the floor and then Jasper reentered my field of vision. He placed his guns on hooks, turned, and from the wall opposite the aquarium picked up a table. He carried it to the center of the room. He quickly returned to the hooks and picked up his guns. He looked down at me and said, “Shift your body ninety degrees and look in this direction.”

I did as commanded. Bob remained between Jasper and me. I prayed for the little thong to hold Bob tightly. I now had a clear view of Jasper’s actions.

Dennis lay next to the table. Jasper placed the guns on the table. With one hand he grabbed Dennis by the belt and hefted him onto the table. It wasn’t a perfectly smooth move, but he executed the maneuver with incredible ease. From the knees down, Dennis’s legs hung past one end of the table. His head rested on the far edge.

Tears, blood, and snot ran down Dennis’s face.

Jasper took a rocking chair from a corner and sat down on it, forming a triangle among the three of us. Bob was directly between Jasper and me. The rocker looked as if it had been carved from one piece of wood. It was all white and unvarnished.

“I don’t like guests,” Jasper said. “You’ve been here before, Dennis. What did I say last time?”

Dennis sobbed while Jasper rocked.

“What did I say?” Jasper repeated.

“That you’d kill me if I ever came here again.”

“Did I ever break a promise I made in school?”

“Jasper,” I said. “It’s not his fault. He drove me out here because I asked him to. We don’t mean to intrude.”

“Yes, you did mean to intrude. You came because the sheriff is dead and you’re trying to find someone who would be a better suspect than yourself. I’m one of the usual suspects they try to round up when anything goes wrong in this county. Only reason I’m not in jail is because they’re afraid to come into my swamp. Doesn’t hurt that my daddy owns half the county.”

He got up and walked to a cupboard and took out a slim box about eighteen inches wide and twenty-four inches long. He set it down on the floor in front of me so that I could see what he did. It comforted me to know that even Jasper took care not to get in range of Bob’s fangs.

He opened the box. It was filled with knives of various sizes. He examined them carefully, then picked out a slender one from the blue-velvet-lined interior. He snapped the lid shut and carefully replaced the box on the floor on the far side of Bob’s leash.

Jasper stood next to Dennis’s head. “I’ve been curious about the sheriff’s killing,” he said. “Lots of secrets in this county, and I know most of them. Usually, I stay in my swamp, but I sneak out when I have a mind to. I thought it was funny last night how Hiram Carpenter made you walk all the way up the driveway. I almost laughed out loud when I rustled that bush and you almost ran out of your pants to get to the house.”

“You were there?”

“You know what I’ve always wanted to do?” he said, then answered his own question. “I’ve always wanted to play connect-the-dots on somebody’s face.”

The threat was awful, but I think his constantly talking in a whisper was the most unnerving thing of all.

Jasper continued, “You know, like connect the dots from zit to zit.”

“That’s not necessary,” I said.

Jasper walked into the kitchen area, opened a drawer, took out a pair of surgeon’s gloves, and pulled them on. “Can’t be too safe these days, with all these diseases going around. Don’t want to infect myself. You never know who might be queer and trying to spread diseases. Always thought you were a fag, Dennis. Even in first grade, I thought you had a bit of a swish.”

Dennis’s eyes tried to follow what Jasper was doing. I could see the whites around Dennis’s gray pupils.

Jasper flipped a knob on a radio. I heard soft country music. Throughout his preparations, Jasper hummed softly along with the music. Songs to torture by. I knew I’d hate the sound of country music as long as I lived, which I hoped would be longer than sunset.

Jasper took several thick towels from a pile in an open cupboard. He folded one several times, then lifted Dennis up by his belt and gently placed the towel under his crotch. He placed the others in a small pile next to his butt. From another drawer he pulled out some rope and tied Dennis’s torso to the table. Then he opened the cupboard under the sink and pulled out a plastic dish drainer. He placed a towel under it, and the whole thing under Dennis’s head. He returned to the kitchen and came back with numerous smaller towels, three bottles of rubbing alcohol, and a box of cotton balls.

Gently he took Dennis’s glasses off and placed them carefully next to the sink.

Dennis tried to wiggle and squirm from his bonds, but Jasper had tied him tighter than a swarm of Eagle Scouts working together for an hour.

Jasper stood with his feet on either side of the table end near Dennis’s head, leaving enough room so that I could see clearly what he was doing.

Jasper said, “You still have zits, Dennis. You should see a dermatologist. But then that won’t be a problem after today.”

“Leave him alone,” I ordered.

Jasper said, “Course now, you’re out here investigating. Y’all want to know who would want the sheriff dead.” As he talked, Jasper gently lifted Dennis’s head as carefully as if he were a diamond cutter choosing where to carve the next facet of a jewel beyond price.

“Lots of people didn’t like the sheriff. Especially women who couldn’t fight back. He used to take advantage of them a lot. I never put a stop to it, because I enjoyed watching when I could. Instead of arresting young ladies who were in trouble, he’d often as not take them into the backseat of his police car. Bet they could find all kinds of interesting things if they took a microscope to the back of his car. He never saw me watching. Best show in town on a Saturday night. I was going to buy a video camera so I could film it and give him a Christmas present. Died too soon.”

He let Dennis’s head down gently so that his victim’s nose faced in my direction. He entwined his fingers in Dennis’s hair and gripped tightly. Jasper said, “The biggest zit is here.” He placed the knife next to a yellow-headed pimple in the middle of Dennis’s chin. “And the next largest seems to be here.” Jasper sliced a bloody furrow from the chin to the side of Dennis’s nose. Dennis screamed and tried to yank his head away. He was barely able to move his face a quarter-inch, but the rest of his body twisted and spasmed. The ropes held him to the shaking table. Blood flowed from the four-inch-long gouge in Dennis’s face. The skin on either side of the cut flapped open. If Dennis lived, he would be scarred for life.

I went berserk. I began bellowing epithets at Jasper and coiling myself backwards, attempting to leverage myself for some kind of spring at him.

Jasper grabbed a gun and aimed it at me.

Keeping Bob between us, Jasper edged to the aquarium, took the tongs, opened the glass lid, and plucked out another viper.

“Do you know how a person dies from the bite of a cottonmouth?” he asked. Jasper provided the answer I didn’t want to hear. “It dissolves the tissue it comes in contact with, and the swelling spreads out from where a person gets bitten. It itches some, and pretty soon you’ll want to scratch a whole whale of a lot. Then you sort of collapse and die. Course, sometimes this doesn’t happen all at once. Can take ten minutes or a lot longer. Depends.”

He swung the snake in my direction. I became very quiet.

“Over here,” he ordered, pointing to the original spot I’d been in.

I moved slowly, my eyes never leaving the thing at the end of Jasper’s tongs.

“This is Roy,” Jasper said. “I named all the snakes after the therapists I had as a kid. Bob and Roy were the first two counselors, and the first two cottonmouths I caught.” Once again he shoved the creature inches from my nose. Then he secured the rope-thing behind its head, placed the end of the cane onto the floor, and pinned it in place. Bob was still between me and the table with Dennis. Roy lurked on the other side of me. The only direction I could move now was backwards, maybe three feet to the aquarium, where more snakes were encaged.

On the table Dennis’s body continued to jerk spasmodically. An acrid stench reached my nostrils. I understood why Jasper had placed the towel under Dennis’s middle. Then for a while Dennis didn’t move. I figured he’d passed out. The towel and drainer mat under his face caught the blood that poured out. Almost lovingly Jasper cleaned Dennis’s wound, once going to the sink and pouring water on a washcloth to rinse out the mess created on it. When he finished cleaning, he stood back a few feet to examine his work. He came within six inches of Bob, whose mouth gaped open as he lunged to the end of his tether. Jasper never even looked in the snake’s direction. He did not deal with the towel under Dennis’s middle.

I tried to think of a way to get free and save us, but nothing seemed likely. Jasper returned to the kitchen area and came back with a small vial. This he placed under Dennis’s nose. Eventually Dennis came around. His eyes blinked at me. He began alternately crying, screaming, and begging. “God, it hurts! … I’m sorry! … Please, let me go! … I’m sorry! I’m sorry! … Please don’t hurt me anymore!”

Jasper sat in his rocking chair and let Dennis babble on like this until the young reporter was hoarse with his pleading.

When Dennis was quiet, Jasper returned to his position six inches in back of Dennis’s head.

“No!” Dennis screamed.

He fainted again. Jasper revived him and began the same type of preparations he’d done before the first cut. The preparation again seemed to take an eternity.

Jasper resumed speaking in his chatty whisper, as if his best friends had come to an intimate tea party. “Now, the sheriff was having intercourse with anything female that moved. Maybe an angry husband decided to do him in. Hard to tell.” All this while his eyes roved and his hands gently probed the skin on Dennis’s face, in a pore-by-pore inspection.

I heard the radio playing softly, occasional thunder, Dennis’s whimpers, Jasper’s whispering or humming, Bob and Roy rustling, the whine of bugs and mosquitoes, and the continuous thud of rain hitting the roof. I could feel several bugs biting. A few landed on Jasper, but he never brushed them off. If a mosquito landed, it got a meal and then flew off.

“Of course, it could have been Al Holcomb. Old Al thinks the world revolves around his penis and the Ku Klux Klan. I’m the only one besides the sheriff who knows Al has a black mistress deep in Thomas Jefferson woods.”

He took the knife and slashed a path between two pimples three inches apart on Dennis’s forehead. Dennis screamed and passed out again. Jasper took his bottle of rubbing alcohol and several cotton swabs and cleaned the blood off of Dennis’s face. When the bleeding stopped, Jasper took the towel, rinsed it thoroughly, and placed it back under Dennis’s face. Jasper cleaned him up, revived him as often as necessary, and then began hunting for a new spot.

He picked up speaking exactly where he had left off, as if inflicting these ghastly wounds were as meaningless as knitting a shawl. “Having a black mistress is not considered good form among fellow Klan members. Still have trouble with interracial couples in this neck of the woods. Course, a black man with a white woman would still cause quite a stir. Sort of like faggots. If they kept quiet, they probably wouldn’t be harassed on the street, but late at night, my the things you can do to scare people.”

I tested the handcuffs again. My hands weren’t going anywhere. I could move my feet a few inches, but my ankles were absolutely not going to part without help from another appendage. I could maneuver my knees some. If the impetus for physical action was going to happen, it would be from them, which seemed kind of pointless. Leaping to one’s knees to subdue an unencumbered opponent was on the stupendously stupid end of the spectrum of options.

“Listen, Jasper,” I said. “Please let him go. Don’t hurt him anymore. We really mean you no harm. Can’t you just listen?” I continued speaking even past the point when I figured he wasn’t paying the slightest attention. He simply kept humming and checking Dennis’s head. Finally I let out a roar that must have come close to rupturing my vocal cords. “You listen to me, you son-of-a-fucking-bitch.” I gasped for air. He simply got up and walked carefully to the other end of Roy’s cane/leash. He unhooked the end and moved it so Roy’s gaping maw came to within three inches of my face. I shut up.

Jasper started another round of inspecting Dennis’s head. By this time the young reporter’s eyes were glazed. Jasper had him conscious, but only by a little.

“Now, Hiram Carpenter is a secretive fellow. I wouldn’t trust that whole family. My daddy never liked them much. Always so high and mighty with their big-deal faggot son. Hiram’s a thief. Always has been. Tried desperately as a kid to outshine his brother, but never could match him. He has this huge spread in the north part of the county. For a while I thought he grew drugs or maybe imported them, but old Hiram’s a clever one. I’m not sure what he’s up to. I think the sheriff was on to him about something. Course, each one is sneakier than the others. Got too much religion in that crowd. Thought Nathan was going to be a good Nazi for a while, but he chickened out. Got religion at a tent revival one year. Poor sap. Shannon Carpenter is sneaky. She’s been up to something lately. I’m not sure what. Quitting her job unexpectedly. Leaving the house in the middle of the night for trysts with somebody. I’ll find out who. Has to be illegal.”

Jasper placed the knife against a large zit in the middle of Dennis’s cheek. “Nothing to connect this to,” Jasper said. He inserted the knife and twisted. This time Dennis’s body nearly came off the table, which shuddered and moved several inches. If evil swamp creatures truly existed, they would have fled at the sound of Dennis’s howl of agony.

Agonizing minutes later, when Jasper got done cleaning and reviving, I could see a half-inch-diameter patch of white in the middle of Dennis’s cheek. Jasper had cut through to the bone. It took quite some time for him to stanch the blood enough so that nothing covered the hole he had made.

Finally Jasper stood in front of Dennis again. He’d cleaned and washed out towels after each session; twice emptied the dish drainer of accumulated blood. Before he started, everything had to be neat and in place.

“Now then, you don’t know about Preacher Hollis. He does not like you boys. Course, I don’t either. The saintly little pudge gets up on Sundays and threatens his fellow sinners with hellfire and damnation. I enjoy his sermons. Try never to miss them. Reminds me of Jonathan Edwards and ‘Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.’ I got hold of all of Jonathan’s sermons that have survived. Memorized all of them. Bet that’s a surprise to you, Dennis. Thought I was stupid in school. Wasn’t stupid. Just never cared much for it.

“Well, our sheriff never did get much below the age of consent with his escapades with women, but I’m afraid our preacher has gone far below the legal age to satisfy his carnal desires. If I had a little girl, I wouldn’t let her go on a field trip with the preacher.”

“The Preacher Hollis?” I asked. “The one who did so much to out Scott?” I didn’t know whether to believe Jasper or not. If it was true, it gave us a powerful weapon.

Jasper didn’t answer me. For a few minutes he chuckled to himself or hummed along with the music. Without warning he resumed: “I’ve actually got pictures of our holy preacher damaging the goods. Sheriff just found out.”

He sighed and looked at me. “You know the problem with everything I’ve told you?” He didn’t wait for my answer. “Unfortunately, I don’t actually know who killed the sheriff. I also have to admit that while I’m good at sneaking around this county and getting information, some of this has come from inside the police department. You just can’t trust anybody these days. However, the main problem is, you’re both going to be dead, and you’re never going to be able to use any of this information.”

I noted that Dennis seemed more conscious than he had been in a while. At least his eyes followed the movement of the knife carefully. As Jasper swung it back and drove it toward his face again, Dennis jerked back. The sudden movement caused Jasper to miss his aim, but not for the better. No matter where it was supposed to land, I saw the knife start above and to the left of Dennis’s left eye and cut a furrow down and over the eye. Dennis’s subsequent scream raised the hair on the back of my head.

The spasms of his body, whether voluntary or involuntary, as it tried to get away from this invasion, launched the table forward. Not far, but enough that it hit Jasper’s midsection and caused him to lose his balance and tumble to the floor. Bob struck. I saw his jaws close on Jasper’s tanned calf. The guns on the table clattered to the floor on the far side of the table.

Jasper whirled around and in seconds had his hands wrapped around the far end of Bob’s tail. Jasper began twirling the snake over his head. He was screaming at the top of his lungs and not paying attention to me. I was glad to hear something more human than the incessant monotone whisper.

I could now move into the area no longer guarded by the snake on my right. I rolled to my side, tucked my legs under me, and leveraged myself to a crouching position. Jasper faced away from me as he swung the snake. I could maneuver my feet maybe three inches at a time. I moved as silently and as quickly as I could. Jasper twirled suddenly and slammed the snake’s head down on the tabletop. As best I could, I hurled myself at him. The weight of my body propelled him across the cabin. His back and head crashed into the side of the door. His head banged against a protruding hinge and he lay still.

All this took maybe five seconds.

I thought about the guns, but it wouldn’t do much good for me to hold them in my manacled hands behind my back while trying to get myself free.

I turned to Dennis. His head was turned away from me. The snake’s body lay on the floor. Its head was completely smashed. I hopped to Dennis and saw his face. The knife had fallen to the floor. The last cut bled profusely. The initial point of penetration looked deep, but the rest didn’t look as bad. Dennis’s eyelid was bleeding, but I wasn’t sure if the eye itself had been cut. At least he was still breathing.

I hopped over to the knife, knelt down, and leaned backwards. Sweat poured down my body faster than the rain outside as my still-shackled hands reached down for the knife. It took several tries, and I thought I heard Jasper groan. Finally, I grabbed the knife handle. Fortunately for me, Jasper kept everything in prime condition. The knife was very sharp and quickly cut through my bonds. Unfortunately, Jasper was coming around and my hands were still cuffed and I had no idea where the key was.

My feet were free when Jasper shook his head groggily. I stepped quickly over, balanced myself carefully, and aimed a kick at his crotch with all the power I could muster. He shrieked nearly as loudly as Dennis. He groaned and arched his body in agony, then pulled himself into a fetal position. I needed him unconscious. Dead would not have bothered me. I aimed a kick at his kidneys, and he flopped onto his back with his hands in front of his running shorts. His head was close enough to the wall. I aimed a kick at it. His skull thunked resoundingly against the wood, and his eyes closed in unconsciousness.

I glanced at Roy, still eagerly waiting to use his fangs if anybody got too close. He seemed securely in place. I had no experience with poisonous creatures. Trying to kill it could just as easily get me bitten.

Anal-retentive insane people are good for one thing. In one of the drawers I found sets of keys, each in its own little receptacle, neatly labeled. With my wrists still shackled I couldn’t reach far enough into the drawer to pick up the correct key. I had to dump the contents out, but I managed to do this with some care so they didn’t spill all over. Still, it was good that I remembered what the key looked like. It took painful contortions, and I scraped off large chunks of my wrists before I got the key inserted, turned, and freed myself.

First, I shackled Jasper with handcuffs and rope. Then I hurried to Dennis. Blood still oozed, especially from the last cut, but I didn’t bother trying to clean the wounds. Infection was the least of my worries. I covered his face with a towel and hoped he would stay unconscious until I got us some help. My watch told me we’d been captive for over three hours.

I took the car keys from Dennis’s pocket. I wedged the shotgun under his belt and stuffed the handgun into my pants pocket. I didn’t see any other weapons, nor could I waste time looking for them. I didn’t doubt Jasper had an arsenal handy.

Outside, the rain fell in torrents and the sky was dark. The mud squished under my feet as I carried Dennis through the downpour to the car. While in the cabin I’d dried off some, but I was completely soaked again before I’d walked three feet. The path was more mud and puddles than solid ground. I had to plant each foot carefully in front of me so I wouldn’t slip. Even then, halfway to the car, I almost dropped Dennis. A large tree was in the direction of my fall and stopped me, but I had to go to one knee to keep myself up. As I staggered forward again, a bolt of lightning sheared through the top of a mammoth pine tree about twenty yards ahead.

While struggling through the downpour, I wondered what to do with Jasper. I remembered the description he’d given of the effect of a bite from a cottonmouth. He was young and strong, so it might take quite a while for the bite to kill him, but even so I was sure that if he didn’t receive prompt medical attention he would die. Not being an anal-retentive loony but a man desperate for escape, I had not cleaned after myself. The knives and keys were as available to him as they had been to me. I figured our safety was more important than his life. I decided to go back to at least throw his means of getting loose into the surrounding swamp. I would get us out of danger, then send help back to him. By the time I eased Dennis into the car and closed the door, I knew what I had to do. I couldn’t just let Jasper die. I took both shotgun and handgun and turned back to the cabin.

Jasper stood at the edge of sight in the trees. For once I wished I was the neatnik in my relationship with Scott. A little more anal retentiveness and I’d have cleaned away Jasper’s means of freeing himself.

Jasper raised a hand with a gun in it and came running toward me. I dropped the handgun, grabbed the shotgun, pulled it up, and fired both barrels. The echoes rivaled the thunder for dominance. Jasper disappeared into the foliage. I didn’t know if I’d hit him or not and I didn’t want to take any chances. I grabbed the handgun, jumped in the car, started the engine, and realized I was facing the wrong way. I had neither room nor time to turn around.

I glanced out the windshield. Jasper emerged from the undergrowth and began running toward us. I threw the engine into first and aimed the car at him. I grabbed the handgun, reached outside the window, and fired two rounds. My ears rang from the noise.

When he saw the gun, Jasper threw himself onto the ground and rolled into cover. I slammed on the brake and jammed the car into reverse. The car fishtailed in the mud. Jasper’s arm and head appeared around a tree fifteen feet away. He started firing. I tromped my foot down on the accelerator as the sound of gunfire boomed and roared. It’s tough enough to hit something that is standing still, and a moving target is even more difficult. Maybe if I repeated this to myself often enough, it would come true.

Because I was racing backward, I had to grip the wheel tightly with both hands to keep from flying off the road. I’d never driven backwards so far, so fast, much less in such conditions. Not something a lot of us practice.

Jasper was now maybe fifty feet away. Of course, a Volkswagen is a mite or two bigger than a person; but large as it was, we were throwing up showers of spray as we bounded over the ruts and potholes, making accuracy even tougher.

Even if I dared take a hand off the wheel, I hesitated about firing the gun. I had no more ammunition for the shotgun and didn’t know how many rounds I had left in the handgun. I had to assume Jasper had an unlimited supply.

Using the side and rearview mirrors for guidance made me keep my head further above the protection of the dashboard than I wanted, but there was no helping it; I had to see our path. The VW’s engine was in the back; so except for a tire, which wouldn’t have stopped me at this point, the only vital thing Jasper could hit was my exposed head.

I was going faster than I should have on the muddy road. Jasper began to sprint toward us. As the tires slipped in the mud, so did Jasper’s footing. He fell twice, and the second time came up limping. Trying to run and limp and shoot made his aim even more inaccurate. Forget this movie crap where they raise their guns and make dead-aim shots after swinging their guns into position. Nevertheless, we weren’t far enough away. The windshield shattered from one of the shots.

Then his firing abruptly stopped. Was he reloading, or circling around, or planning a trick, or finally being overcome by snake venom? I had no idea.

I came to the end of the small lane we’d entered last. Finally, there was enough room to maneuver. I swung the car around, rammed the clutch into first, and floored it. The wheels spun in the mud for an agonizing instant. I eased up on the gas pedal. The car rocked back. I gunned the engine again and the car surged forward.

The only thing I can liken to that journey back to the road is Mr. Toad’s wild ride. I concentrated on holding on to the wheel, seeing through the rain, and not missing any turns. My thoughts swung wildly through anger and vengeance to memories of Scott and my family to moving to an arid desert and thinking I’d kiss every flat inch of the Midwest if I ever got back to Illinois.

Except for the final turn, we’d taken every right to get in, so now I took every left to get out. I had no idea how far we had to go. Getting here had taken at least forty-five minutes.

Thunder boomed all around us, and I could see streaks of lightning through the thick foliage. Rain poured in through the broken windshield. The only thing wetter I could imagine would be drowning in the ocean. It was odd driving in the rain without wipers.

After one sharp turn, for which I had to slow, I thought I saw in the distance a solid gray spot that could have been the highway. Seconds later I realized that it was Jasper in the middle of the road. I hunched down, tried to swerve the car from side to side as much as I dared, yet aim straight toward him. Again his gun boomed amid the rain. He must have hit the front of the car any number of times, but I held on, barely keeping my eyes above the rim of the dashboard. Several shots whizzed through the broken windshield and smashed through the rear window.

When I was twenty feet from him, Jasper moved off the path and behind a screen of brush. He could simply wait by the side of the road and pour a rain of fire into the car as we passed. I picked up the handgun and aimed it out the front window. Driving forward and gripping the wheel with one hand would have to work. I slowed for an instant. I wrenched the wheel toward the farther side of the road. Water spewed from the tires on the right side of the car. I saw Jasper grinning as he raised his gun. Suddenly I swung the car toward him, accelerated, and began firing. The bushes swayed violently as we rushed past. The car began to swerve. I swung the wheel violently to the left. The car swayed and then rocked back onto the road. I floored it. Gunshots roared next to my ear. I heard them thunking into the car, but we flew on. Unfortunately, now, for the first time, he would have a shot at the engine.

Gunfire continued behind us. White smoke began to shoot from the rear as I drove on. Seconds later we came to the row of weeping willows that had marked our entrance into the swamp. I plowed through their dangling branches and turned back toward Brinard.

Dennis woke up a mile or so down the road. He variously screeched and moaned, “I’m going to die! … I’m going to be blind! … God, it hurts! … God, I’m sorry! … Make it stop! … Please, let me die!” I tried to comfort him as best I could, with one hand on the wheel and the other patting and caressing him.

Mercifully, he passed out again a few minutes before the smoke stopped pouring out of the back of the car. Seconds later the warning lights on the dashboard lit up. I didn’t care if I drove the car with hazard lights brighter than the lightning around us. However, on the next rise, the car began to lose power. Down the next decline we picked up speed, but the next incline was impossible. The car coughed, shuddered, and stopped in the middle of the road.

Two cars had passed us going the other way; none had caught up and passed us going this way. I got out and hurried to the passenger side. I had no idea what resources Jasper might have. Perhaps even now he and his favorite tank were rumbling toward us. I wasn’t going to feel safe until I was in the middle of some kind of civilization. I opened the door, made sure Dennis was breathing, and carefully lifted him from the car.

I began to carry Dennis. I was halfway up the next incline when I heard a car engine behind us. I turned. I didn’t know if it would be Jasper in full pursuit or a stranger willing to help. It turned out to be neither. An old man in a straw hat glanced at us once and accelerated over the rise.

I started forward again. I was almost to the top of the hill when a police car topped the rise in front of us. I saw the brake lights flash on. The car skidded until it was half off the road. Using the shoulder, the driver righted the car, turned around, flipped on the Mars lights, and parked behind us. Cody hurried over.

“What the hell?” was his only question. Then he saw how badly hurt Dennis was. Quickly he helped me carry him to the backseat of the police car. I flopped into the front. I barely noticed the cool air flowing from the vents. I realized how drenched I was and then noticed that my hands and arms were trembling worse than a junkie in need of a fix.