But not sick.
She reached into her memory again, and found more pieces. Going to bed. Staying awake as long as she could for fear the voices would come.
The voices and the dreams.
They had come last night — if it really was last night: the way she felt, it seemed like it must be days since she’d rested at all. But the dreams had come, worse than ever. There had been people all around her, lifting her up, putting her on—
On the gurney! The gurney she was still on? But how? It was a dream!
More pieces fell into place. She remembered tubes being put through her nose and her mouth and—
She whimpered at the memory, then flinched as she felt the pain of the needles that had jabbed into her arms and her legs and her belly and her chest and—
The whimper grew into a cry of pain and horror.
A second later she heard an answering sound — the same sound that had drawn her away from the beckoning arms of sleep. She twisted her head again, and now, through the gray twilight, she could just make out a shape lying on the gurney that stood a few yards from her own.
“I-is anyone—” she began, but her strength failed her before she could finish the question. She thought she saw a movement, but it was so slight and so nearly invisible in the dim light that an instant later she was no longer sure she’d seen it at all. Her breath escaping in a silent sigh, she let her head roll back so she was looking straight up.
And went back to her memories.
There were people all around her — faces she recognized, but that didn’t look quite right. They all looked younger than she remembered them, and they were smiling at her, clucking over her like hens over a wounded chick.
Hens… That was it — the faces had all been women.
Except Tony had been there, and Dr. Humphries, and—
“Lauuurrrie!”
The howl of anguish came boiling up out of her memory, and even though her name itself was barely recognizable in the chaos of the scream, she recognized the voice at once. Her mother! Her mother had been there too, and tried to rescue her, to save her from—
From what?
She didn’t know.
But one thing she did know: it was not a dream.
It had never been a dream.
It had all been real. The voices behind the wall of her room, the figures around her bed, the fingers prodding and poking at her — all of it had been real.
A sob welled up in her, but even as it began to constrict her throat, something changed. It was so subtle that at first she thought she was wrong. But then it happened again — a faint draft wafting over her cheek, as if someone had opened a door somewhere. She choked back the sob, forced herself to be completely silent — even held her breath and willed her heart to stop beating — and listened.
Footsteps.
Then the dim light brightened, and she could at last see the space around her. Above her, heavy beams supporting wide, rough-hewn boards.
Around her, brick walls, blackened with age.
Pipes and wires and ducts running everywhere, slung between the beams and running up the walls.
The basement — it had to be the basement of The Rockwell. And now, as the footsteps drew nearer, she twisted her head to look once more at the other gurney. Now the shape that lay on it was clear — a boy, his body so thin it was almost lost under the sheet that covered it. His head was twisted so he was looking toward her, and she could see his eyes, sunken deep into their sockets, and looking huge in his emaciated face. He lay so still that for a moment Laurie had a terrible feeling that he must be dead, but then, as the light brightened still more, he blinked.
Blinked, and moaned, and seemed to Laurie to shrink even smaller than he already was. A moment later she heard a rattling sound as if someone were pushing some kind of cart toward her, and then she heard a voice, one that she recognized, but couldn’t quite place. But when a shadow fell over her, and she looked up, she recognized who it was in an instant.
Rodney. Next to him was an old-fashioned tea-cart, like the ones they sold in the shop where her mother worked, and on it stood two glasses filled with something Laurie couldn’t identify.
The doorman was peering down at her, and when he spoke, the stench of his breath made her turn her head away.
“Don’t do that,” Rodney said, his fingers closing on her chin and forcing her face back so she was facing him once more. “I like to look at you. Don’t turn away when I look at you.”
Laurie tried to cry out, but her voice failed her, and all she could do was stare up into the doorman’s eyes.
“Time to eat,” he said, his grip on her jaw relaxing. Then he uttered a strange sound that wasn’t quite a laugh. “Can’t have you dying on us, can we?” he asked. “Oh, no — can’t have that. Not yet, anyway.”
Then Rodney slid an arm under her shoulders, his touch cold and clammy against her skin, and raised up, almost causing the sheet to fall away. Supporting her with his arm, he picked up one of the glasses with his free hand and held it to her lips.
Too weak to resist, Laurie let her lips open and a moment later her mouth filled with a foul-tasting slime that made her stomach convulse in rebellion.
“Swallow it,” Rodney instructed, holding her mouth closed to prevent her from spitting the stuff out. His head bent closer, and his foul breath washed over her as he spoke into her ear. “Go ahead and swallow it. Or would you rather die right now?”
Her stomach knotting with nausea, her throat constricting against the disgusting concoction, Laurie forced the mouthful down.
It was followed by a second mouthful, then a third.
By the fourth, Laurie was sobbing, and by the fifth she was certain she would die if she had to drink any more of it.
Then she began to be afraid of something even worse.
She began to fear she might not die.
CHAPTER 36
“I want to know where Laurie is!” Ryan demanded. His fists on his hips, he glowered furiously at Melanie Shackleforth.
“I’ve already told you,” Melanie replied, putting far more patience in her voice than she felt. “She’s spending the night with one of her friends.”
“Who?” Ryan challenged.
Melanie’s eyes narrowed and her lips compressed. There was a time — a time she still remembered very clearly — when children were to be seen and not heard, and children like Ryan Evans were given a sound thrashing until they learned to mind their manners. But that was a different time, and Anthony Fleming had given her strict instructions that she was not to strike the boy, no matter how offensive he became. But if the boy kept this up much longer—
“You don’t know, do you?” Ryan taunted, seeing the anger in her eyes. “You don’t know because you’re lying!” He moved closer, and raised his voice. “Liar! Liar! Liar!”
Melanie’s fury, which she’d carefully held in check all through the long afternoon she’d stayed with Ryan, was on the verge of boiling over. She should have left him locked in his room — as Anton had instructed — but when he’d begged to be allowed to go to the bathroom, she’d decided that Anton could be overruled. And until a few minutes ago, he’d behaved himself. But now it was becoming apparent that Anton was right — she should have left him locked in his room to sulk all afternoon. That’s what Virginia Estherbrook would have done. But Virginia was gone, never to return, and Melanie Shackleforth — a name she was starting to like even better than ‘Virginia Estherbrook’—intended to be much more modern. But Ryan Evans was making it very difficult.