The nurse seemed to understand though. “We’re in the hospital,” she said. “We had a little—” She hesitated a second, then smiled sympathetically. “We’re just exhausted, dear. We’ll be fine in a few days, though — just you wait and see.”
A hospital? What kind of a hospital? “C-can’t—” Caroline began, struggling once more to sit up, but failing yet again.
The nurse laid a hand on Caroline’s shoulder. “It’s all right, dear. We just got a little excited during the night, and we wouldn’t want to fall out of bed, would we?”
Excited? Fall out of bed? What was the nurse talking about? But even as she put the question together, the answer came to her.
Tied down!
She was tied to the bed like the patients in a mental hospital!
But that was wrong — she wasn’t crazy! She wasn’t even sick! She’d just had a terrible nightmare. She’d seen Tony and what he and the neighbors were doing to Laurie and—
An image exploded in her mind, an image of Tony coming at her, with Dr. Humphries on one side of him and Max Albion on the other. And she’d attacked him, slashed at his face. His skin had ripped away, and underneath she’d seen—
The memory of the stench of death suddenly filled her nostrils once more as the suppurating rot of Tony’s flesh rose before her eyes. She felt herself gag, then her mouth filled with the foul taste of bile.
“It’s all right, dear,” the nurse said as Caroline’s stomach contracted violently and vomit spewed forth from her mouth. “It’s just the drugs — sometimes they do that. But you’ll be fine in a day or two — you’ll see.”
As Caroline’s stomach heaved once again, and her eyes filled with tears, and a choking sob of fear, confusion, and frustration constricted her throat, the nurse began cleaning the vomit away with a wet cloth, then changed the soiled case on the pillow beneath Caroline’s head.
But even after she was gone, and Caroline was once again alone in the room with the bamboo-patterned green wallpaper, the sour smell of her own vomit still filled her nostrils, and the nausea in her stomach wouldn’t subside.
But it wasn’t the drugs that had caused it.
It was the memories.
The memories of what she’d seen last night.
The memories that weren’t of nightmares at all.
All of it — every bit of it — had really happened.
And now they’d locked her up, and she had no idea where she was, and no idea of how to get out.
And Tony Fleming had her children.
Out! She had to get out, to get back to her children, to save them! Her terror dissolving into rage, Caroline struggled against the bonds once more, but it did no good.
She was held fast, unable to help herself, let alone Ryan and Laurie.
Neither his fear nor determination had been quite enough to keep Ryan awake through the long hours of the night, but they’d kept him away from sleep long enough so that when he finally woke up he knew instinctively that it was late in the morning. But even as he started to scramble out of bed his memory cleared, and the terror of last night came flooding back. The chill that began as he remembered what he’d heard through the closet in his stepfather’s study culminated in a shudder as his mother’s scream echoed once more in his head. The memory made his eyes sting with tears and nearly sent him back to the security of his bed, but then he heard his father’s voice once more: ’Crying won’t help… get up… keep on playing the game.’
With the memory of his father silently urging him on, Ryan pulled on his clothes and went to his bedroom door. But before he reached for the knob, he stood gazing at it for several long seconds, questions — questions for which he had no answers — flicking through his mind. What had made his mother scream last night? And why hadn’t she wakened him this morning? Even though he couldn’t go to school, she wouldn’t have just let him sleep in. What if his mother wasn’t even there? What if Tony had locked the door last night, and he couldn’t get out of his room? What if…?
But there were too many what ifs, and finally he reached for the doorknob, closed his fingers on it, and twisted.
Not locked.
He pulled the door open and stepped out into the hall.
Silence.
He moved to the head of the stairs, instinctively treading so lightly that he made no sound at all. He paused to listen, but there was nothing to hear except the ticking of the hall clock downstairs, mournfully noting each passing second. Ryan started down the stairs, the sound of the clock growing louder with every step he took. When he came to the last step he paused again, but now the clock seemed so loud he was sure it would drown out anything else. But then the aroma of frying bacon filled his nose, and in an instant his fear eased. Everything was all right! His mother was making breakfast, and in a minute he’d be sitting at the kitchen table drinking his orange juice, and everything would be the way it was supposed to be. “Mo—” he began, but the word died on his lips before he could even complete its single syllable.
It wasn’t his mother frying bacon at all.
It was Tony.
“Where’s my mom?” he demanded, his voice as truculent as the glare he fixed on his stepfather.
Anthony Fleming looked up from the skillet, his gaze meeting Ryan’s. Ryan did his best not to look away, but as he stared into the man’s eyes a strange feeling started to come over him. This wasn’t like the staring contests he’d had with his friends, or even with his father, when both of them knew it was a game, and behind the intense stare you could see the laughter that would burst out when one of them — either of them — finally blinked.
This time all he saw was a terrible flatness, and a single word came into his mind.
Dead.
It was like a dog he and Jeff Wheeler had seen in the park last summer — the dog had been trying to cross the 79th Street Transverse when a cab had hit it. The dog had yelped with pain but the cab hadn’t even stopped and the dog had just lain there, getting hit by two more cars before there was a break in traffic and he and Jeff had been able to drag it off the road onto the grass. But it was already too late — the dog wasn’t breathing, and blood was running out of its mouth, and it wasn’t even twitching.
“Jeez, is he dead?” Jeff had breathed as they both stared at the animal. Its eyes were wide open, but there was a look in them that told Ryan the answer, and he’d silently nodded his head.
Now he saw that same look in his stepfather’s eyes. Flat and empty, like he couldn’t even see Ryan, it was a look so frightening that Ryan turned away, then sank onto his chair and reached for the glass of orange juice that was exactly where his mother always put it. He started to take a sip of the juice, but then changed his mind, certain he wouldn’t be able to swallow it. When he spoke again the truculence was gone from his voice, and his eyes remained fixed on the glass of juice.
“Where’s my mom?” he asked again. “And where’s Chloe and Laurie?”
Anthony Fleming put a plate of bacon and eggs in front of Ryan, then sat down across from him. “Laurie’s gone to school,” he said. He reached across the table as if to take Ryan’s hand, but Ryan pulled it away, dropping it into his lap. “And I’m afraid your mother got sicker last night.”
Liar! The word popped into Ryan’s mind so quickly that he almost blurted it out, catching it at the last instant before it could betray him. ‘… keep on playing the game…’ his father’s voice whispered. He looked up, forcing himself to peer once more at Tony Fleming’s eyes. “Sh-she’s going to be okay, isn’t she?” he asked, hoping his stammer didn’t sound as fake to Tony as it did to himself.