The Empty Chair

at the idea—a rape whistle in Tanner’s Corner?—but she now searched desperately for it.
    But the whistle was gone. Maybe Garrett had found it and taken it when she’d been passed out on the bloody mattress. Well, she’d scream for help anyway—scream as loudly as she could, despite her parched throat. Mary Beth grabbed one of the insect jars, intending to smash it through the window. She drew it back like a pitcher about to let fly the last ball of a no-hitter. Then her hand lowered. No! The Missionary was gone. Where he’d been was just a dark willow trunk, grass and a bay tree, swaying in the hot wind.
    Maybe that was all she’d seen.
    Maybe he hadn’t been there at all.
    To Mary Beth McConnell—hot, scared, racked with thirst—truth and fiction now blended together and all the legends she’d studied about this eerie North Carolina countryside seemed to become real. Maybe the Missionary was just another in the cast of imaginary characters, like the Lady of Drummond Lake.
    Like the other ghosts of the Great Dismal Swamp.
    Like the White Doe in the Indian legend—a tale that was becoming alarmingly like her own.
    Head throbbing, dizzy in the heat, Mary Beth lay on the musty couch and closed her eyes, watching the wasps hover close, then enter the gray nest, the flag of her captor’s victory.

    Lydia felt the bottom of the stream beneath her feet and kicked to the surface.
    Choking, spitting water, she found herself in a swampy pool about fifty feet downstream from the mill. Hands still taped behind her back, she kicked hard to right herself, wincing in pain. She’d either sprained or broken her ankle on the wooden paddle of the waterwheel as she’d leapt into the sluice. But the water here was six or seven feet deep and if she didn’t kick she’d drown.
    The pain in her ankle was astonishing but Lydia forced her way to the surface. She found that by filling her lungs and rolling on her back she could float and keep her face above water as she kicked with her good foot toward the shore.
    She’d gone five feet when she felt a cold slithering on the back of her neck, curling around her head and ear, heading for her face. Snake! she realized in panic. Flashing back to a case in the emergency room last month—a man brought in with a water moccasin bite, his arm swollen nearly double; he’d been hysterical with pain. She now spun around and the muscular snake slithered across her mouth. She screamed. But with empty lungs and no buoyancy she sank beneath the surface and began to choke. She lost sight of the snake. Where is it, where? she thought furiously. A bite on the face could blind her. On the jugular or the carotid, she’d die.
    Where? Was it above her? About to strike?
    Please, please, help me, she thought to the guardian angel.
    And maybe the angel heard. Because when she bobbed once again to the surface there was no sign of the creature. She finally touched the muck of the stream bottom with her stockinged feet—she’d lost her shoes in the dive. She paused, catching her breath, trying to calm down. Slowly she struggled toward the shore, up a steep incline of mud and slick sticks and decaying leaves that eased her back a foot for every two that she managed to staggerforward. Watch the Carolina clay, she reminded herself; it’ll hold you like quicksand.
    Just as she staggered out of the water a gunshot, very close, split the air.
    Jesus, Garrett has a gun! He’s shooting!
    She dropped back into the water and sank beneath the surface. She stayed for as long as she could but finally had to surface. Gasping for breath, she broke from the water just as the beaver slapped its tail once more, making a second loud crack. The animal vanished toward its dam—a big one, two hundred feet long. She felt a hysterical laugh rise up in her from the false alarm but managed to control the urge.
    Then Lydia stumbled into the sedge and mud and lay on her side, gasping, spitting water. After five minutes she’d caught her breath. She rolled into a sitting position and looked around her.
    No sign of Garrett. She struggled to her feet. Tried to pull her hands apart but the duct tape held tight, despite the soaking. She could see the burnt chimney of the mill from here. She oriented herself and decided which direction to go in to find the path that would take her back south of the Paquo, back home. She wasn’t that far from it; her swim in the creek hadn’t taken her downstream much from the mill.
    But