Something hard beneath her.
Motion now, and then a slight jar, followed by a new sound.
Wheels rolling across the oaken floor.
Into deeper darkness, where the whispered voices took on a hollow sound, and faint echoes seemed to play in her ears.
Then there was light, and for the first time she could see the figures around her.
Faces smiling at her — faces she recognized.
Melanie Shackleforth, her fingers gently brushing a lock of hair from Laurie’s forehead.
Helena Kensington, peering down at her, her withered hands clasped before her breast, her eyes — bright, vibrant eyes the exact same shade of blue as Rebecca Mayhew’s, fixed on Laurie’s own.
“So pretty,” Helena whispered. “Even prettier than I thought when all I could do was touch her face.” She leaned closer, and one of her fingers traced the line of Laurie’s jaw. “Do you remember dear? Do you remember how I touched you?”
Laurie’s skin crawled, and she wanted to pull away, but now nothing — not her arms or legs, or even her head — would obey her will.
Then Irene Delamond was there, leaning so close that Laurie couldn’t turn away from her fetid breath. “Would you like another scone, dear? It’ll be good for you… as good as you’ll be for me.”
Though she tried to clench her teeth, the old woman pressed a doughy mass into her mouth.
“Wash it down, dearie,” another voice said, and now Lavinia Delamond was there, too, a glass of something in her hands. With one trembling hand the ancient woman lifted Laurie’s head while the swollen fingers of her other hand held the glass to her lips.
Helpless to resist, Laurie let the fluid — so sweet it almost made her gag — trickle through her mouth and down her throat.
“Good,” Lavinia crooned. “So good…”
Laurie felt her throat begin to go numb.
Then it began.
One by one, a dozen or more tubes were inserted into Laurie. They went through every orifice of her body and where there were no orifices, needles punctured her skin and plunged deep inside her, piercing every organ, tapping every gland. Though she tried to turn away, to twist her neck and thrash her hips, there was no escape. Every tube led to some kind of pump, and to the other side of the pumps, other tubes were attached. At the ends of those tubes were more needles, and each of the needles was inserted into a vein or plunged directly into the body of one or another of the haggard old women around her.
“Sleep,” a voice crooned from close by her ear. “Sleep the night away, and when morning comes all that will be left will be dreams.”
As the tubes began to fill with liquid — some blood-red, others pale yellow, or brown, or a sickly green, or even so clear as to look like water, Laurie began to feel an exhaustion creep over her, but it was an exhaustion such as she’d never felt before. Her breath grew shallow, her heart began to pound, and her skin turned clammy with sweat. She could feel every muscle in her body weakening, her vision beginning to fade, and the sound around her turning muffled as if her ears were filled with cotton.
A chill came over her, reaching deep into her until even her bones began to ache. As her vision faded further and what she was certain was the darkness of death began to close around her, she heard a new sound, faint at first, but then louder and louder.
Sighs.
Sighs of contentment, emanating from the time-ruined women into whom Laurie’s youth was flowing.
Then, as the darkness enveloped her, the sighs faded away.
Her mind drifting, Laurie surrendered to the cold and the dark and the silence.
CHAPTER 32
The line between dreams and reality had become so blurred for Caroline that when she opened her eyes in the darkness of the bedroom she wasn’t quite certain where she was. Was she caught up in the strange terrors of consciousness that had been building ever since the moment when she’d found the pictures of her children in her husband’s desk or was she lost in the panic of some terrible nightmare?
For a moment — a moment that seemed to go on for eternity, she couldn’t be sure. But slowly — agonizingly slowly — her mind once more began to function, her memory to clear.
The details of the day — or at least the details she could remember, flooded back to her.
She’d known she should get out — known from the moment she’d awakened from the sleep induced by whatever drug it was that Dr. Humphries had given her. But she couldn’t — she’d felt too weak, too ill, to gather whatever she could pack for herself and Laurie and Ryan. Better to wait until tomorrow.
Better to wait until Tony had left the apartment.
Better to act as if nothing was wrong at all.
Somehow she had gotten through the evening. Her ‘flu’ had helped — Tony had attributed her silence to her illness rather than the fear and suspicion that was its true cause. She’d retreated to her bed early, but not to sleep. There would be no sleep that night. Instead she would lie awake in the darkness, listening and watching, guarding her children against whatever danger had crept into their lives.
Listening to the man she’d married — the man she had loved only a few days earlier — sleep beside her.
He had given her pills — tiny, white, powdery pills that looked exactly the same as the ones that Dr. Humphries had given her earlier — and she’d smiled gratefully, and thanked him, and pretended to wash them down with the glass of water he’d brought with him. But she hadn’t swallowed the pills at all — instead she’d palmed them, crushing them to dust in her right hand as she held the water glass in her left. As she sipped the water, she wiped away the dust of the medicine on the sheet of the bed. Returning the glass to Tony, she’d lain back against the pillows and prepared to watch and listen through the endless hours of the night.
Instead, she’d slept.
How had it happened? She’d slept most of the day, and when she’d gone to bed she’d been wide-awake, and though her eyes were closed her mind was racing and her ears were tracking every sound she heard.
She’d listened to Tony come in, heard him cross the room, felt him bend over her, felt his lips brush her cheek.
Heard him go on to the bathroom.
Heard him coming to bed.
Felt the bed sag slightly as he got in next to her.
Heard his breathing fall into the long slow rhythms of sleep.
Now she searched for that sound again, to reassure herself that he was still beside her, that he hadn’t slipped away into the darkness to—
— to do what?
She listened, and she heard nothing.
The silence — and the emptiness she felt in the room — made her reach over and snap on the light.
Tony’s side of the bed was empty.
She got up, pulled on her robe, and went out into the hall.
Silence.
The children!
She moved down the hall, pausing at Ryan’s door to listen, then opening it to peer into the darkness within. Enough light leaked through the window to let her see her son. Chloe, her tail up and one paw lifted, was standing on the bed like a hunting dog on point. Then, as if satisfied that Caroline posed no threat, the little dog eased back down onto the blanket covering Ryan. Caroline was about to pull the door closed again and move on to Laurie’s room when suddenly Ryan spoke.
“Mom?”
“Honey? Are you all right?”
A second or two of silence, then: “I heard them again, Mom. The ghosts — the voices in the walls. I heard them whispering.” His voice, small and frightened in the darkness, drew her to him, and she perched on the edge of his bed as he clung to her. “I’m scared, Mom,” he whispered.
“I know,” Caroline replied, stroking his head. “But it’s going to be all right — I’m not going to let anything happen to you, and tomorrow we’ll go away.”