Dark Rivers of the Heart

violently jerk open the door.
        And then I'm inside, into the black room again.
        Don't look at her Don't. Don't! Don't look at her naked. No right to look at her naked. This can be done with my eyes averted, edging to the table, aware of her only as a flesh-colored form out of the corner of my eye, floating in the dar ness over there. "It's okay, " I tell her, my voice so hoarse from the choking, "It's okay, lady, he's dead, lady, I shot him. I'll let you loose, get you out of here, don't be afraid."
        And then I realize I haven't any idea where to find the keys to the manacles. "Lady, I don't have a key, no key, got to go for help, call the cops. But it okay, he dead." No sound from her there, out of the corner of my eye. She'd been dazed from the blows to her head, only half-conscious, and now she's passed out.
        But I don't want her to wake up after I've gone and be alone and afraid.
        I remember the look in her eyes-was it the same look in my mother's eyes at the very end?-and I don't want her to be so afraid when she wakes and thinks he is coming back for her That's all, that's all.
        I just don't want her to be afraid, so I'm going to have to bring her around, shake her, wake her up, make her understand that he is dead and that I'll be back with help. I edge to the table, trying not to look at her body, going to look only at her face. A smell hits me. terrible.
        Nauseating. The blackness is dizzying again. I put one hand out.
        Against the table To steady myself. It was the right hand, still remembering the curve of her breasts, and I put it down in a warm, viscous, slippery mass that wasn't there before. I look at her face.
        Mouth open. Eyes. Dead blank eyes. He has been at her. Tzo slashed.
        Vicious. Brutal. All of his great strength behind the blade.
        Her throat.
        Her abdomen. I spin away from the table, away J-from the woman, collide with the wall. Wiping my right hand on the black wall, calling for Jesus and for my mother, and saying "lady please lady please, " as if she could mend herself by an act of will if only she'd listen to my pleas. Wiping wiping wiping the hand, front and back, on the wall, not only wiping off what I've pressed it into but wiping off the way she felt when she was alive, wiping hard, harder, angrily, ferociously, until my hand seems on fire, until there nothing in my hand but pain.
        And then I stand there awhile. Not quite sure where I am any longer I know there's a door.
        I go to it. Through it. Oh, yes. The catacombs.
        Spencer stood in the center of the black room, his right hand in front of his face, staring at it in the hard projected light, as though it was not at all the same hand that had been at the end of his wrist for the past sixteen years.
        Almost wonderingly, he said, "I would've saved her."
        "I know that," Ellie said.
        "But I couldn't save anyone."
        "And that's not your fault, either."
        For the first time since that ancient July, he thought he might have the capacity to accept, not soon but eventually, that he had no greater weight of guilt to carry than any other man. Darker memories, a more intimate experience of the human capacity for evil, knowledge that other people would never want forced on them as it had been forced on him-all of that, yes, but not a greater weight of guilt.
        Rocky barked. Twice. Loud.
        Startled, Spencer said, "He never barks."
        Slipping off the safety on the S.I.G, Ellie swung toward the door as it flew open. She wasn't quick enough.
        The genial-looking man-the same who had broken into the Malibu cabin-burst into the black room. He had a silencer-fitted Beretta in his right hand, and he was smiling and squeezing off a shot as he came.
        Ellie took the round in her right shoulder, squealed in pain. Her hand spasmed and released the pistol, and she was slammed into the wall. She sagged against the blackness, gasping with the shock of being shot, realized the Micro Uzi was sliding off her shoulder, and made a grab for it with her left hand. It slipped through her fingers, hit the floor, and spun away from her.
        The pistol was gone, clattering beyond reach across the floor toward the man with the Beretta. But Spencer went for the Uzi even as it was falling.
        The smiling man fired again. The bullet sparked off the stone inches from Spencer's