Chapter 1
The snow fell in large wet flakes and clung to the tree branches. Yesterday it had been fine and dry. Strong winds had piled drifts three and four feet deep and all the lesser roads to Trenton were blocked. He had moved the cot beside the window and for some hours now he had lain quietly, smoking cigarettes and staring upward at the falling flakes. They had a hypnotic, soothing effect. There were millions of them and they seemed to rush downward at his face like tiny white vehicles, at the last moment colliding harmlessly against the windowpane and settling to the ground beyond his angle of vision.
For days there had been no sound. The soft silence had lulled him into a relaxed state of detachment he had never-known before. He felt totally refreshed, totally at ease, capable of almost anything and then, out of the soft silence, came the bell-chimes of feminine voices-an incongruous sound in the days of silence and aloneness and falling snow.
He crushed his cigarette in the ashtray on the floor, slid from the cot and walked to the other side of the room. Lifting one of the venetian-blind slats, he saw them coming toward the house-not down the path because the path had been covered with snow and they didn't know where it was. Instead, they were coming across the side yard, stumbling and plowing through the snow. Four of them-four women.
The wet snow clung to their shoulders and their hair. He saw one of them walk directly toward the gully-and he knew she could not know it was there. The snow had drifted over it almost completely, leaving only a slight shallow in the snow. One of the women looked toward the house and instinctively he lowered the venetian-blind slat to a fraction of an inch.
The woman fell into the gully and screamed. The others turned to look at her and one of them went to help her. The one in the gully had sunk to her hips in the snow. She wore a bright red coat and, when she climbed out of the gully with the help of the other woman, she emerged with an awkward wide-legged maneuver.
The fall in the snow had pushed her coat and skirt high around her thighs, and he glimpsed the full length of shapely nyloned legs, the black stretches of garter straps, the pink of underclothing. Her thighs were round and smooth where they disappeared from view at the edge of the pink underclothing sand he felt a tightening in his loins. His heart beat faster and he stared intently until the woman smoothed her skirt and coat down to her knees.
He lowered the Venetian blind and went to the door. Their voices came closer, until he knew they were just outside the door.
"Looks deserted."
"Oh, God, no!"
"There's smoke in the chimney."
"Didn't you see it."
"Where?"
When they knocked on the door, he opened it so fast he startled them. One of the girls stood before him, her fist still upraised, her blue eyes widening. Her lips spread into a bright red O to display twin rows of perfect white teeth.
"Oh!"
"Come in."
He held the door while they came into the room, then closed it gently behind them. They stood in a group, looking at him and at the room. He regretted that he hadn't cleaned the room in over a week. It was sloppy and dirty and he read faint disapproval on one of the girl's faces.
"Do you have a phone?" one of the girls asked.
"No."
"Oh!" It was a cry of dismay from at least three of them. , "We thought there would be a phone here. We thought we could phone a garage and get someone to tow us out of the ditch."
"What do we do now?" The question was asked by the youngest of the four, a small girl with brown hair and brown eyes.
"Now we give up," the one in the red coat said. "Now we give up."
"You can take off your coats and rest for a while," he said, "and have some coffee, if you want."
He waited while they all looked at each other as if each waited for the other to give some approval to his suggestion.
"That sounds wonderful. I could certainly use some coffee."
"Let me take your coats." He took the garments as they slipped from them. When he came closer he smelled the sweetness of their perfumes and again he felt his loins tighten with desire. He held the coats in front of him to hide the evidence of his desire and when he had all four coats he carried them to the closet. He took a long time in hanging them in the closet, until the tightening in his loins subsided. When he closed the closet door to face them, they were standing in the same small group.
"Have a seat." He smiled at them, wanting to make them feel comfortable. He noticed the one that had worn the red coat, the one that had fallen in the gully was wearing a snug pearl-gray dress. Her breasts were erect and large, stabbing at the fabric of the dress as if wishing to burst free of their confinement. He wondered how her breasts would feel in his hands and realized it had been a long time since he'd had a woman. A hell of a long time.
Three of the girls selected chairs. Since there was no fourth chair, the fourth girl sat on the edge of the cot. It was the young one, the one with the brown hair and the brown eyes.
"Coffee?" he asked.
"Thank you."
"If it isn't too much trouble."
He went into the kitchen and cleaned the coffee pot as fast as possible. He reached for the can of coffee and then decided it would be too slow to make a pot of percolated coffee. Better give them instant coffee. He went to the sink, ran water into the pot and set it on the stove.
As he got cups and saucers from the cabinet, he heard them talking in the other room. It was good to hear feminine voices. Just hearing their sound made his loins tighten. He needed a piece. He needed it bad. Their voices were a babble, a maze of giggling and exclamations and endless chatter.
When he carried the tray into the room, he saw they had made themselves still more comfortable. They had taken off their boots and some of them had lighted cigarettes. One of them had dug out a tube of lipstick and was carefully applying it, studying herself in a small round mirror. When he came into the room, she hurried to put the lipstick and mirror in her pocketbook. She was the largest of the four, a tall dark-haired woman with full, sensuous lips.
He walked around the room and handed each of them a cup and asked them if they wanted cream or sugar. When he finished, he sat on the cot-but not too close to the small girl with the brown hair and brown eyes.
"How close is the nearest phone?"
"About ten miles," he answered.
"Ten miles!"
"Jess Parker's house," he explained. "Jess Parker owns the forest and the farm."
"Do you have a car, Mister...? "
It was the young one with the brown hair and brown eyes. She had turned to face him, frowning slightly as she asked the question, and now she was faltering because she did not know his name.
"Scott," he said. "Stanley Scott."
"That was stupid of us. We should have introduced ourselves." The one speaking was the one that had worn the red coat, she nodded toward the girl sitting on the cot beside him and said, "Janie Joyce." She nodded toward the tall dark-haired woman and said, "Ellen Porter." Toward the plump woman beside her and said, "Emma McCall." Pressed a forefinger against her chest to indicate herself, said, "Irene Hughes."
During the silence that followed, he sipped his coffee. As it was still too hot to drink, he turned toward the small brown-haired girl on the cot beside him, the one he now knew as Janie.
"I have a car," he explained, "but I'm sure it wouldn't be any good. All the roads are blocked. How did you get this far off the main road?"
Irene answered. "We were going to Trenton along Route 882. The snowplows had cleared it but during the night some of the snow must have frozen. It was like a sheet of ice. When we came to Miller's Hill, the road was blocked by cars that couldn't get up the hill. Emma said she knew a short cut around Miller's Hill.
"I tried it but it turned out to be the wrong road. We kept going for miles and miles, hoping to find a way to the main road. Most of the road was clear-I guess the wind had blown it clear. We kept looking for a place to turn around and finally I saw a place that looked wide enough. I tried to turn around and we went into a ditch."
"It's all my fault," Emma said suddenly. "If I hadn't suggested..." Stanley turned to look at the plump woman named Emma and saw that her eyes were misty as if she were about to burst into tears.
"It isn't important whose fault it is," Irene said. "The important thing is that we get our car out of that ditch. You say this Jess Parker has a farm?"
"Yes."
"Would he have a tractor he could use to pull our car out of the ditch."
"He has a tractor."
"We'd be willing to pay him. Could you ask him to pull our car out of the ditch?"
"I'll ask him." He finished his coffee and glanced at them. They were all watching him with that air of expectancy so common to many women. They wanted him to help them. That was all they wanted from him. They wanted him to help them and they wanted him to help them now.
He went to the closet and took out his black rubber boots. He slipped into his coat and selected his cap with the earflaps. He walked to the door and tried to think of something to say. There was nothing. At the door he placed his hand on the knob and turned to look at them. They all sat quietly, some sipping their coffee, some smoking cigarettes. Some had crossed their legs. They were watching him.
He felt a premonition-a sensation similar to what he had felt when he lay on the cot by the window and watched the falling snow and felt the sensation of being able to accomplish almost anything. Looking at them, he knew he would have them. All four of them-one by one. He would rape them and then he would kill them and then he would bury them.
It would be easy. They were in his house. He had the gun in his bureau in the bedroom. With that gun he could make them do anything. He had the hidden room that no one knew about. He could force them into that room and with the threat of the gun he could rape them.
"Can I have the keys to your car? I might be able to get it out of the ditch without a tractor."
Irene reached in the pocket of her red coat and brought out a cluster of keys. She held them in the palm of her hand, extended toward him. He walked to her chair, took the keys and went out into the falling snow.