So now he listened to his father again, stopped crying, and swung his legs off the bed.
He could hear voices again, but they were different from the ones that came from inside the wall. He went to the door, opened it slightly, and listened.
The voices were louder.
The only one he recognized was Tony’s, and when he couldn’t quite make out the words, he tiptoed down the corridor to the top of the stairs.
“Don’t worry,” he heard Tony saying. “It’ll be all right. Everything will be all right.” Then there was another voice — a woman’s voice — but he couldn’t make out what she was saying. Then Tony’s voice again, louder and sounding like he was getting mad: “Haven’t I always made it all right? Just go home and don’t worry, and let me handle it.”
He heard the sound of the front door closing, then saw Tony’s shadow fall on the foot of the staircase. Whirling around, he scampered back to his room, silently shutting the door, then dashing back to bed, almost forgetting to strip off his bathrobe before getting back under the covers. When the soft rap on the door came, he turned on his side so his back was to the window and none of the light from the street would fall on his face.
He tried to breathe slowly and evenly, the way people did when they were asleep.
He heard a faint click as the door opened, then saw a slight brightening through his closed eyes as the light from the hall spilled into the room.
He felt Chloe stiffen beside him, and heard a low growl rumble in her throat.
He felt more than heard Tony coming over toward the bed.
“Ryan?”
Tony’s voice was soft, which told Ryan that his stepfather wasn’t sure if he was asleep or not. Which meant Tony had neither seen him at the top of the stairs nor heard him running back to his room.
“Are you asleep?” Tony asked, a little louder.
Ryan made himself stretch, yawn, and mumble, “Uhn-hunh,” but didn’t trust himself to roll over and look up at his stepfather.
He felt Tony bend over him, and then Ryan’s nostrils filled with a stench that almost made him throw up. Chloe started to growl, but the sound was suddenly cut off and Ryan felt the dog being lifted off the bed. He had to struggle hard against the instinct to reach for his pet, to pull her out of his stepfather’s arms, but his fear of betraying what he’d seen and heard a little while ago was even stronger. He lay still, giving no sign that he even knew Chloe was gone.
“The morning then,” he heard Tony say, and once more the terrible odor — like rotting meat — washed over him.
“Unh-hunh,” Ryan mumbled again, then snuggled deeper into the bed, pulling the covers over his head.
He waited, hardly daring to breathe, but even more terrified to give himself away by not breathing at all.
Finally the putrefying stench began to weaken, and then the room went dark again as the door closed.
The night — and the terror of his mother’s scream — closed around Ryan.
He had never felt more alone or more frightened in his life. Yet every time he started to cry, he repeated his father’s words once more.
“… just keep on playing the game… ”
The trouble was, he didn’t know exactly what the game was.
CHAPTER 34
The weight of sleep was a burden that lay so heavily over Caroline that she could feel it beginning to crush not only her mind, but her body as well. Merely to breathe sapped so much energy away that each breath felt like it might be her last and her heart felt as if it could barely beat, with spaces so long between each throbbing pulse that she began to fear the next one would never come at all.
Her mind was as slow as her body; her brain barely able to find words for the abstractions that drifted through her mind. Even when the words came, they were single scraps of sentences, not connected together into anything coherent.
… dead…
… neighbors…
… Tony…
… death…
… Laurie…
… draining… pumping… sucking… feeding…
Get up.
The simple fact that the two words were strung together into a single sentence brought a vague focus to her mind, and a tiny fraction of the crushing weight lifted from her spirit. Slowly, her mind began to process the simple command, to begin the sequence of actions that would carry it out.
She opened her eyes. Not in my own bed. Not in my own room.
She closed her eyes again to try to process the information her eyes had just sent her brain. An image began to form in her mind, an image of the tiny bedroom she and Brad had shared in the apartment on West 76th Street.
But that wasn’t right — there was a dim memory of another bedroom, a large bedroom with a crystal chandelier— Suddenly the memory snapped into focus. It was Tony’s bedroom… her husband Tony — the man she’d married after Brad.
Brad…
A terrible feeling of loneliness came over her, an aching in her heart that made tears well in her eyes. Where was Brad? That’s who she loved. Then why had she married Tony?
Who was Tony?
… dead…
Get up.
… dead…
Laurie!
Get up!
Once again she tried to galvanize herself into some kind of coherent action, to make her body respond to the commands in her mind. Opening her eyes, she peered at the walls around her. They were covered with wallpaper — pale green, with some kind of pattern. Bamboo?
She wasn’t sure.
But where was it?
A hotel? Why would she be in a hotel? Why wasn’t she at home?
She tried to sit up.
Tried, and failed. It was as if the weight was bearing down even harder on her, pressing her to the bed. She took another breath, this time trying to suck air deep into her lungs, to regain her strength by filling herself with oxygen. The effort nearly exhausted her, and the pain in her chest — a constriction that felt as if bands were wrapped around her — grew worse. Gasping against the constriction, she tried to catch her breath, then turned her head to look at the clock on the night table.
No clock. No table. Not my bed… not my room… where am I?
Now she tried to sit up again, this time using her arms to lift herself.
Once again she failed. Her arms — lying at her sides — were immobile.
Paralyzed! The word seared her brain, and a great wave of panic — a towering fear such as she’d never felt before — rose up in her, wiping every other thought from her mind, threatening to crash over her and destroy not only her courage, but her very sanity.
“Noooo!” The word erupted from her throat as a prolonged howl, but the sound itself turned the panic back, and as her fear receded, her mind began to work again. The single words drifting through her mind began to coalesce into full thoughts, fragments of memory into recognizable images. But what she was remembering had to be a nightmare — it couldn’t possibly be true!
A door opened, and a moment later a face — a woman’s face, surmounted by the kind of old-fashioned nurse’s cap Caroline remembered from childhood — loomed above her. The woman’s eyes were a liquid brown, and her lips were pursed with concern. Caroline felt the nurse’s fingers on her wrist, and saw her gazing at her watch as she counted Caroline’s pulse. The nurse nodded in satisfaction as she released Caroline’s wrist. “How are we feeling? Better?”
Caroline searched for the right words, but couldn’t find them. What was ‘better’? Better than what? Was she sick? She didn’t remember being sick. All she remembered was the dream — the terrible dream where she’d seen Laurie and the neighbors and Tony—
“Wh-what…?” she heard herself stammer. “Wh-where…” But that wasn’t what she’d wanted to say. She wanted to know what had happened and where she was, only the words hadn’t formed in her mouth the way they had in her mind.