Chapter 15 #2
Campbell gives me a confused look, and for a moment, I imagine him saying she is already here.
That it was Corrine who I heard calling out my name and asking if I was okay last night when Henry almost drowned me.
But no, it could not be her. It’s not like I know Corrine’s voice so well after all these years, but I do know that she would not speak my name with concern. The voice I heard was worried for me.
I stammer an explanation for why I am asking about his wife.
“I mean. If Henry comes back, and something happens. Corrine will call someone if you don’t come home.
” I am saying this as a reminder to him, but as a reminder to him of what?
That he can’t hurt me? That’s preposterous. Why would Campbell want to hurt me?
“Everyone knows I’m here,” he says vaguely. He taps the keyboard. “Internet’s working.”
I see the home page of Google load, and I relax slightly. I reach for the landline, but Campbell puts his hand on top of mine, stopping me.
“Phone is DSL, and that’s down,” Campbell says.
These are all words that mean nothing to me.
In ways I am proud of and ways I am not, I am a stereotypical silly little girl who figured out enough to make it in this world and let everyone who wanted to take care of her when things got hard do just that.
Campbell takes out his own phone and makes a show of thumbing the screen, tossing in an irritable sigh here and there meant to convey his frustration.
“Anything?”
“Fucking Verizon,” he grumbles. He nods at the screen of the desktop. “If you want to check your email or anything until this loads, be my guest.”
A small tremor begins at the base of my spine. I keep my voice steady. “I think let’s just get out of here.” I pause, give him a chance to agree. When he doesn’t, I follow up uselessly, “Please, Campbell.”
“Mmmm,” Campbell murmurs noncommittally, eyes on the screen of his phone. There is the telltale vibrational chime of one text, then another. Slowly, Campbell puts his phone in his pocket, then lowers his eyes to mine. “You should check your email, Faye.”
“Why?” I am scared and hungry, cold and exhausted, but my voice is laced with irritation. What the fuck does everyone want with my email?
Campbell groans with real irritation now. “Please, Faye, make my life fucking easy, for once.”
That’s hilarious, but I decide against reminding Campbell that he grew up in the wealthiest zip code in Connecticut with a silver spoon in every one of his orifices. “Maybe,” I say, “if someone would tell me why my email matters so God damn much, I might be willing to help you out.”
“So Henry did try to get into your account.”
I debate my answer, decide honesty is best. “Yes.”
“And you refused him?” There’s something perverted in his tone.
“So far, yes.” I’m flushing like I’ve done something to flush about.
“Good.” Campbell gestures impatiently. “Please sign in. It will take two seconds, and then we can get out of here. I promise it’s not a big deal.”
I don’t see another way out, but still I feel like I’m giving in too easily as I sit down in the ugly black rolling office chair from 1997 and navigate to the sign-in page.
“I’ve been locked out of my account for the last few days,” I say.
“It might not even let me reset my password.” But instead of shaking its electronic head at me, my email server informs me that my request to reset my password has been approved. Fuck.
“Hurry,” Campbell says, glancing at the door.
The process can’t take more than three minutes, but it feels unbearably tedious and drawn out with Campbell standing behind me, taking sharp, shallow breaths that waterboard the same sensitive spot in my scalp.
The moment I’m in, Campbell drops to his knees next to me and brushes my hands off the keyboard with his.
I hate when people do that to me, but I am also dying to know what the hell he is looking for.
I watch as he navigates to the search bar, then types in a name.
The email from PT appears, adorned with the little paperclip icon that indicates an attachment.
Here’s Emma’s script. I haven’t even read it yet, because she changed her mind about what she wanted to write about at the last minute. She’s really great, but it’s inexcusable that this is late. Anyway, let’s catch up when we’ve both had a chance to read.
Campbell selects the message and deletes it. Then he empties my trash and signs me out.
“There,” he says, somewhat cheerfully, at the same time I put a pen into his ear canal.
I expected blood, but there is none, not even a trickle.
For about five full seconds, Campbell and I just stare at each other, horrified, like neither of us wants to believe that I took things to the next level, that we have to deal with this now.
The pen sticks out of Campbell’s ear at a perfect right angle.
He coughs, like something is stuck in his throat, then brings his hand up to feel the mutilation for himself.
His fingers trace the sturdy implant of the pen and he begins to gag aggressively.
I push the rolling chair back into the wall so that I can slide off the seat and crawl underneath the desk to the door.
In the doorway I stop and look back at him. Campbell is curled up in a ball, batting at his ear and making small, whimpering noises. Impossibly, I feel embarrassed. Did I overreact? Is there a simple explanation for all of this?
“I’ll get help,” I promise him. He gives no indication that he believes me, let alone can hear me, and I hurry for the sliding barn door.
I had been sure to latch it behind me when I came in—bears—and the iron hook is jammed at an odd angle.
I push my hip against the door, trying to dislodge it, and in my peripheral vision I see Campbell coming toward me with his arms raised above his head, like a bear did manage to get inside and now he’s trying to scare it off.
One of the heavy ceremonial stones that earlier bruised my shin slams into the ground and somehow, miraculously, I’m staring at it from outside on the covered front patio, the rain roaring all around like a beast disturbed from its hundred-year slumber.
I expel one short cloud of breath, and in the time it takes to dissipate, I process the reality that Campbell just tried to kill me.
Campbell hadn’t expected me to get the door open, and momentum has sent him skidding onto the wet porch, landing with a bone-breaking crack on his knees.
I look down at him and feel a surge of pleasurable, white-hot rage as I reach for the stone and raise it above my head.
I did not, in fact, overreact. I have every right to do what I am about to do.
I bring down the rock with the force of an axe, and Campbell’s skull makes a soft, rotting sound.
It can’t possibly be enough to kill him, to stop him, but he falls forward on his hands and knees, gurgling in a way that seems disproportionate to the squishy little sound his skull made.
His elbows buckle, and he flops flat on the wooden slats of the patio with his head turned to the side, one eye fine and the other discharging a pus-like substance.
He does not blink or breathe. I stare at him, amazed.
I did not realize it would be that easy to kill someone.
And then.
I feel it. I feel him. I raise my eyes. Henry stands at the base of the wide porch stairs, wet clothes clinging to him like plastic wrap, the elements outlining his absurd stature like a warning.
You will not beat him; don’t even bother trying.
He’s beneath me, and by the laws of scale and perception, he should feel dwarfed.
But I am eye to his hawkish eye. I feel like a prairie animal, something small and low on the food chain, like Henry is waiting me out until hunger or thirst forces me into an open field.
I take a step back. He steps forward. Something hot and hopeful springs to life inside me.
Fine.
Kill me.
But chase me first.