"She's just downstairs, sir. Mitchell's wife came by to see her. Do you want something to eat, sir? Maybe some soup?"
"Send Rachel up."
"Sir?"
"You heard me. Send Rachel up. And have her bring me a snifter of brandy. Go on, woman."
Jocelyn went on her way, and Cadmus let his head sink back into the pillow. Lord, he was so, so cold! But the thought that Rachel was downstairs, and that he'd be laying eyes on her in a few moments, made him a little happier with his lot. She was a sweet girl; he'd always liked her. No doubt some of her innocence had been sullied by Mitchell; she'd lost some of her faith in the goodness of things. But she was a strong creature; she'd survive. He reached out, opened the drawer of the bedside cabinet, and reached around for a roll of peppermints. He could no longer chew gum-his jaws didn't have the power-and his mouth was so filled with cankers that brushing his teeth was an ordeal, but he wanted to be sure his breath was reasonably sweet when Rachel came to sit with him. With palsied fingers he fumbled a peppermint on to his dry tongue, and began, as best he could, to suck.
Somebody was shouting in the street outside, and he longed to be there; out from this cold bed, where he could see the sky. Just once more; was that too much to ask?
In finer times he'd liked to walk. He didn't care if it was fair weather or foul; he'd just get out of his limo wherever and whenever the urge struck him and walk. Arctic winter mornings, he remembered, and blistering August afternoons; days in spring when he'd felt like a happy truant, meandering his way home; evenings in midsummer, with half a dozen martinis in him, high as a king, singing as he went.
Never again. Never the street, never the sky, never a song. Only silence soon; and judgment. Much as he'd tried to ready himself, he was prepared for neither.
The window rattled. There was quite a wind getting up. The rattling came again, and this time the heavy drapes shook. No wonder he was cold! That silly bitch of a nurse had left one of the windows open. Another gust, and the drapes filled like sails. This time he felt the wind across the room; it was strong enough to shake the lampshade.
He felt a fluttering in his empty belly, and pushed himself up against the headboard to get a better look at the billowing drapes. What the hell was going on?
He needed his spectacles; but as he reached to pluck them up from amid the bottles of pills he heard somebody say his name.
A woman. There was a woman in the room with him.
"Loretta?"
The woman's voice plunged into a deeper register, and this time there were no words, just a sound, like a kind of roar, that shook the bed.
He fumbled to get his spectacles on, but before he could do so the lamp was thrown off the cabinet, and smashed, leaving him and the trespasser together in the darkness.
"What in God's name was that?" Loretta said. She got up from the table, yelling for Jocelyn, but Rachel was ahead of her, out into the hallway.
There was a shout now: a shrill shout. Ignoring Loretta's instructions to wait, girl, wait! Rachel headed for the stairs. She had a momentary flash of dija vu: ascending the flight two or three steps at a time, hearing the din of panic above, and the howling of wind. This was a scene she'd played out before, and for some reason she had kept the memory in her soul.
At the landing, she glanced back down the flight. Loretta was coming after her, clinging to the banister for support, Jocelyn at the bottom of the stairs, asking to know what the noise was.
"It's Cadmus, you damn fool!" Loretta yelled back at her. "I thought I told you to look in on him!"
"I did!" Jocelyn said. "He asked for brandy. And for Rachel."
Loretta didn't respond to this. It was Rachel she called after.
"Stay away from that door!"
"Why?" Rachel demanded.
"It's not your business! Just go back downstairs."
The door was rattling, violently, and there was no small part of Rachel that wanted to do exactly as Loretta had instructed. Perhaps after all this wasn't her business-it was Geary lunacy, Geary grief. But how could she ignore the sobs of panic that were coming from the bedroom? Somebody was terrorizing the old man, and it had to be stopped, right now. She turned the handle of the door-which rattled in her palm-and pushed. There was a force pressing on the door from the other side; she had to lay her whole body against the door to get it to open. When it did, it flew wide, and she pitched forward, so that appropriately enough she didn't step but stumbled into the midst of the tragedy waiting for her on the other side.
Cadmus's room was chaos. The enormous bed was empty, the covers thrown off, the pillows scattered around. All but one of the lights had gone out, the exception being his bedside lamp, which lay on the floor, flickering nervously. The cabinet it had stood upon had been overturned, as had the chairs and the small dressing table. All the appurtenances of the sickroom-the pill bottles and their contents, the medicines and the measuring spoons, the IV stand, the vomit bowl and the oxygen machine-were littered about, smashed, pounded, rendered useless.
Rachel looked for Cadmus, but she couldn't see him. Nor could she see any sign of whoever had caused this mess. She advanced into the room a little way. The drapes fluttered. The window, she saw, was open wide. Oh Lord! Had he tried to escape and fallen? Or been thrown out? As she started across the room, pills and glass crunching under her feet, she heard a soft sobbing. She looked in the direction of the sound, and there, crouched in the deep shadows in the corner of the room, she saw Cadmus. He was naked, his hands cupping his genitals, his face like that of a terrified monkey: lips curled back from his teeth, brow deeply furrowed. His eyes were upon her, but he made no sign of recognition. He simply stared, and shook. "You're going to be all right," she said to him. He said nothing. Just kept staring at her as she approached. The closer she got to him, the more she saw the harm that had been visited upon him. There were raised-we\\ts on bis shouVdm and chest, fiercely red against his sallow skin; and there was blood coining between his fingers, and pooling between his legs. She was appalled. Who would come into a dying man's room and cause such suffering? It was inhuman.
He had begun to sob loudly now. She hushed him gently, as a mother might hush a frightened child, but his eyes grew more panicky the closer to him she came.
"Don't…" he said, "Don't touch me…"
"I have to get you out of here," she told him.
He shook his head, drawing his limbs still closer to his body. The motion caused him pain, she saw; he dosed his eyes for a moment, and a little cry escaped him.
From the landing now, the sound of Loretta yelling at Jocelyn, telling her to go back downstairs. Rachel glanced up at the door. She had time to catch a glimpse of Loretta, then the door slammed hard, locking Loretta out. The noise started Cadmus wailing, the frail knot of his body shaking violently.
She didn't attempt to soothe him. He was too traumatized to be comforted; she'd be wasting her breath. Besides, she had another concern. Whatever force had slammed the door in Loretta's face, and was holding it closed, it was here in the room with her. She could feel its power, grazing the back of her neck.
Very slowly, she turned round. She wanted to be face to face with it if it decided to move against her: to see it plainly, if it was the last thing she did.
She scanned the room again. Her eyes had grown accustomed to the light from the flickering lamp, but they were still unable to find the cause of the maelstrom. She decided to simply call it forth.
"Where are you?" she said. Behind her, the old man's wails abruptly died away. He seemed to hold his breath, as if anticipating the worst. "My name's Rachel," she went on, "and he-" she pointed back toward Cadmus "-is my grandfather-in-law. I'd like you to let me take him out of thisToom and get him some help. He'sbleeding."