“Now let me get this straight,” Rochelle asked as Caroline finished. “This man lives in The Rockwell, and he likes Chinese food and your children?” Caroline nodded.
“Marry him,” Rochelle pronounced.
But Beverly Amondson was shaking her head. “Too good to be true. Besides, aren’t you getting a little old for the ‘Oh, my God, we both love Chinese food’ bit? Everybody likes Chinese food when they’re dating! And don’t men always pretend to like your children until they get in your pants?” “Beverly!”
Beverly rolled her eyes at Rochelle’s shocked tone. “Oh, come on, Rochelle. It’s perfectly true, and you know it.” “Well, even if it is, I still think Caroline should marry him.” “Marry him?” Caroline protested. “I hardly even know him! He might not even call me again.” “Well, if he does, hang up.”
Andrea Costanza’s words hung in the air, silencing the other three women, and it was finally Caroline herself who broke the silence. “Hang up?” she echoed. “What on earth are you talking about?” “That building,” Andrea said, visibly shuddering.
“The building?” Rochelle Newman echoed. “You mean The Rockwell? It’s fabulous!” But Andrea was shaking her head. “It’s creepy.” She turned to look at Caroline. “What was the apartment you were in like?” Caroline shrugged. “It needs some work, but it’s going to be gorgeous when I’m done with it. She wants me to redo everything.” “Why isn’t it gorgeous already?” Andrea asked archly. Now all three of her friends were staring at her. “Well, I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s just that — well, there’s this girl — one of my cases. She lives there with her foster parents, and every time I have to go there, I get the creeps.” Caroline rolled her eyes. “Now you’re starting to sound like the kids.” When all three of her friends looked at her uncomprehendingly, she recounted the rumors the children in the neighborhood had been spreading among themselves. “Ryan even made me cross the street to keep from walking in front of it on Saturday.” “Well, I don’t blame him,” Andrea said. “I’m telling you, the whole place gives me the willies.” “The willies,” Beverly repeated. “That tells us a lot. So because you get ‘the willies’ in one apartment in a building, Caroline shouldn’t go out with someone who lives in another apartment?” Her eyes narrowed slightly. “If I didn’t know you better, I’d say you were jealous.” “Jealous?” Andrea echoed. “Why on earth would I be jealous?”
“Maybe because you’d rather Caroline didn’t get a second husband before you’ve gotten a first?” Beverly asked. “Especially one who lives in a building where someone’s been kind enough to take in one of your poor little children.” Andrea stiffened. “I’ve managed not to be jealous of you, Bev, while you’ve plowed through three husbands,” she replied. “In fact, if I felt anything while you were doing that, I think I’d identify it as pity, not jealousy.” “Pity? For me?”
“More likely for your husbands,” Rochelle Newman said quickly, trying to defuse the situation before either of her friends said something they couldn’t back away from. Andrea and Beverly both seemed to be weighing their options, and it was finally Andrea who spoke, making a visible effort to let go of her anger as she made the decision to let the moment pass.
“Who knows?” she said, offering Beverly a smile that was obviously intended to be conciliatory even if it wasn’t quite successful. “Maybe you’re right.” She turned to Caroline. “And Bev is certainly right that my not liking the building is no reason for you not to date someone who lives there. I’m sorry I even brought it up.” “What if she marries him?” Rochelle asked. “Will you go visit her?” “Yes,” Andrea replied. “Of course I will.”
But she’d hesitated a moment too long before she spoke the words, and something in them didn’t ring true.
PART II THE SECOND NIGHTMARE
Breathing.
It was barely audible, but he could hear it whispering in the darkness.
His own?
His brother’s?
He wasn’t sure.
He had no idea how long he’d been in the darkness. When he’d gone to sleep the last time — or at least what he thought was the last time — it hadn’t been completely dark. It had never been completely dark, at least not that he could remember. Always, there had been some kind of light. The night-light from when they were babies, first sleeping in the same crib, then in the twin beds that were as alike as they were.
Could he really remember sleeping in a crib?
Or was the memory just another one of the dreams that drifted out of the darkness?
The darkness… don’t give in to the darkness… remember the light…
Even after the night-light was gone, after his mother had said he was too old for a night-light, there had still been the lights outside the windows. Wherever they’d lived, there’d always been some kind of light.
He could remember a streetlight, a glowing yellow globe at the top of a cement column. It hadn’t been right outside the window, but a little way down the block, so its light drifted up the wall across from his bed, and across half the ceiling.
Another room, where the only light came from headlights of cars passing in the street outside, sending shadows racing across his wall in an endless chase. Those shadows had brought bad dreams with them, dreams in which he was the quarry being chased, but it never mattered how hard or how fast he ran, he could never get away. But back then, back when there was still the light, he always awoke from the dream, always escaped from the nightmare back into the light.
The last room, where the light flooded in all night, from the white, bright streetlight, from the cars and trucks that droned down the street all night long, from the skyscrapers that loomed blocks away, even from the moon when it was the right time of the month.
Those were the lights that had brought the nightmares he’d finally gotten lost in.
The nightmares where he couldn’t run fast enough, where he always got caught and no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t escape from the torture that followed his capture, tortures that went on until he thought he was going to die.
Tortures where he could feel his life slipping away until he finally faded away into the blackness that closed around him. But even then the light would finally drive the dream away, except that after awhile he couldn’t really tell when he was dreaming, and when he was awake, because even when he was awake he could still feel his life slipping away.
Then had come the night when he hadn’t escaped the darkness at all.
By then the nightmares were coming so often that he was afraid to go to sleep, but it didn’t matter because no matter what he did, he always slipped into that horrible place from which there was no escape, surrounded by indistinct figures that poked and prodded at him, made every part of him hurt as if he was being stuck with a million needles, whispering among themselves, uttering words he could hardly hear, but that made him more fearful than if he’d heard a wolf howling outside his window.