Then Nan stopped screaming. Blood broke from her lips and her eyes went blank.
Very slowly, Spencer allowed her broken dead body to slip to the floor of the closet, her blood flooding out on to the dog-eared papers and documents that had once been the property of the hapless, now deceased, Sherman Reese.
As Nan hit the floor, Jillian, in her hospital bed felt… something, something that wakened her. Something grim and awful. She felt as if a part of her had been killed and she sat bolt upright in the bed and screamed. “Nan!” 20
Jillian was determined to get out of the bed. She had to get out of that damn hospital. It took her a while to remove all of the IV tubes from her ann. Then she pushed down the gate on the right side of the bed, swung herself around, and sat there for a moment, her feet poised above the cold hospital floor. Then she pushed herself off, as if launching herself into the void, her toes making contact with the floor. She held herself steady against the bed for a moment or two, then straightened and staggered toward the closet on the far side of the room. She was going to get dressed and get out of there.
There were clothes, fresh, clean clothes, in that closet, clothes that Nan had placed there, put away like a bride’s trousseau, against some happy day in the future. It took a while for her to get dressed— she had never realized what complicated things zippers could be, and how recalcitrant and difficult buttons are, but she managed to get herself dressed and out of the hospital room without being detected.
It was still very early in the morning and Jillian could totter down the hallway undetected. All around her the sick and the insane were sleeping. The nurses were not at their posts and most of the doctors had left the building. Jillian carefully made her way to the elevator bank at the end of the corridor.
Mercifully, the elevator was empty and with a sudden burst of happiness, she stepped into the car. Her happiness did not last long. As the elevator reached the ground floor and the double metal doors swept open Jillian found herself looking out at an-other hospital corridor and two exhausted-looking interns standing there waiting for a ride.
Jillian trembled with fear.
“Ma’am?” said one of the doctors in training. “Ma’am? Are you okay?” She saw the two young men and the hospital hallway behind them, but beyond, the corridor raced off into the blackness of space. This time the stars were gone.
“Are you okay?” he repeated.
Jillian managed to nod and she stepped off the elevator walking with the exaggerated precision of a drunk. The two interns looked at her, then at each other, and shrugged. They were really too tired to care… Outside of the hospital the world appeared to be normal. She walked down the sidewalk, looking for a cab, but there was none in sight. Up ahead was a bus shelter, glowing in the dark from the light of its advertising panel. She walked to it and stopped there a moment, hoping for a bus, then realizing she knew nothing about the New York City bus system. As soon as she decided she would wait there and throw herself on the mercy of the driver of the first bus to come along, she saw something that made her wince with terror. A man was coming down the street, walking fast and purposefully. She had no idea who he was, but she had no doubt that he was coming for her.
Jillian ran, dashed a round a corner, and almost ran into a cab that was just pulling away from the curb, having just dropped a fare. Frantically she waved it down and threw herself into the back seat. The driver could not be seen, hidden as he was behind dark and scratched Plexiglas. She leaned forward and blurted out her address.
“Yes, missus, very good,” the driver replied to her instructions. He had a heavy foreign accent and that reassured her. There was no way it could be Spencer.
Jillian sat back in the seat and looked out at the passing cityscape. Everything appeared as it should. There were a couple of people on the sidewalk, there were cars on the street. She allowed herself to relax for a moment—until the cab rolled to a stop for a red light at an intersection. Jillian felt the fear again and she looked through the back window to see another cab a few hundred yards behind bearing down on her. Jillian pounded on the Plexiglas.
“Go! Go!” she screamed at the driver.
“But it is red, missus,” came the reply.
Jillian was crying now. “Go, please, please go…
“But, missus, I cannot.”
“Oh God,” she gasped. She had to get out of that cab. She grabbed the handle and threw open the door. But New York City had vanished, replaced by the vast blackness of space. Jillian slammed the door and fell back on the cracked vinyl of the seats panting and sobbing, so filled with terror she was paralyzed.
Then from the front seat she heard Spencer’s voice, calm and reasonable.
“You see it too, don’t you?” Spencer said softly. “Don’t you, Jillian?”
“Yes,” she gasped, her voice broken and hoarse. “And it’s just us, all alone… no one else knows,” said Spencer.
Jillian nodded. “Yes,” she said.
“Just us…and now you know.”
“It’s not a dream,” Jillian whispered. She opened the car door and stepped out into the street and ran, But Spencer’s voice followed her, she could hear it in her head, she could hear it all around her, as if he had en over the city.
“Look around,” he said. “These people don’t know you. No one knows you. Only me. It’s just us now, Jillian. You and me. And what’s inside you…we’re connected.”
But even as she heard her husband’s voice she heard the voice of the cab driver, irate and screaming about her running out on her fare…
The subway train screamed into the station like a demon, its iron wheels shrieking on the track as it came to a stop. The doors swept open and Jillian entered and sat on a bench. There were a few tired-looking night workers in the car, wending their way home after a long, dark shift in the office towers of the city. No one looked at Jillian and she made no eye contact. She gazed out the window, but as the kinescope flash of light and dark in the subway tunnel danced before her eyes, a series of random images thrust themselves into her brain. She saw herself in bed with Spencer, Follow the Fleet on TV, Fred Astaire singing.
Fred Astaire’s voice died away and she saw an-other scene from her life. Jillian and Spencer were in bed again. But this time they were in their bed in New York. Jillian was flat on her back as if drugged, Spencer on top of her, thrusting into her. Somewhere nearby was the insect sound.
Jillian burst into tears, and an old woman across the aisle looked at her. The scream of the subway wheels masked the sounds of her sobs.
Now she was on the examination table in Denise’ s office. On the ultrasound monitor she could see the twins, in utero, more fully formed than she had ever seen them. Their eyes stared out, their mouths open as they floated inside of her.
The twins vanished, replaced by the horrific scene of Natalie Streck standing over that bathroom sink. Jillian could see herself in that mirror, and behind her stood Spencer.
The subway shrieked as it pulled into a station. The doors creaked open and Jillian jumped to her feet and fled. It was so quiet and so still on the street. She was nearly at her apartment building and she was alone. She put one hand on her stomach and wept with relief. Then she heard a whisper behind her.
Spencer said, “Jillian?” His voice sounded heavy with relief. Jillian whipped around and saw him walking quickly toward her. She screamed and ran for the front door of her building.
“Jillian!” Spencer shouted. “Please…” But she didn’t stop. She burst into the foyer of her building, her sudden appearance waking the snoozing night doorman. He sat up behind the desk and blinked at her as she ran for the elevator. She hit the up button hard.