Julian pushed that thought out of his mind.
There was far more traffic than there should have been, and he seemed to hit every red light along the way. Several times, he ended up hitting the steering wheel in frustration as he just missed a yellow light, wondering whether the delay would cost him or whether, if he had sped through the red light, he would have been stopped by a cop and ticketed, wasting even more time.
Julian played it safe, just in case, but he grew increasingly agitated as he drove, the short trip seeming to take forever.
Finally, he turned onto Rainey. The houses looked like they’d been abandoned for months instead of days. There were no cars in any driveway, and every tree, shrub, plant or blade of grass was dead. In the middle of the block was his own house, and while he understood that all of the homes here were haunted or corrupted, he knew that his house was at the center of it; in his house lived the source.
He pulled into his driveway, opened the car door. The neighborhood was silent, and the second he got out of the vehicle, he heard his son’s cry. “Daddy!”
It was just like in his dream, and, horrified, thinking he’d been granted a glimpse of things to come, he ran up the driveway, past the side of the house. But there was no hole in the center of the backyard.
“Daddy!”
The voice was coming from inside the house, though how it could be so clear and loud Julian did not understand. It occurred to him that it was not James at all, but he’d never know whether that was true unless he checked, and he ran across the patio and opened the back door, bursting into the kitchen.
“Daddy!”
James’s voice was coming from the basement, and Julian rushed over to the door with a sinking feeling in his gut, remembering what Claire had seen Pam and her husband, Joe, doing down there.
“James!” he called. “I’m coming!”
The basement door was locked. He had no key for it—he wasn’t sure there was a key—so he began kicking the door as hard as he could, aiming the heel of his shoe at the metal plate framing the knob and the lock. He wasn’t sure what good that would do, since the door opened outward, but after two good hard kicks, he heard a metallic clank, and when he tried opening the door again, there was wiggle room.
“Daddy!”
“I’m coming!” Julian yelled. He kicked the door again. And again. And this time when he tried to twist the knob, it turned, and the door swung open. The light was already on downstairs, and as he hurried down the steps, he saw that all of the bags and boxes, all of the odds and ends they’d stored down here were gone. There was only one thing on that basement floor.
The hole.
It was the same hole as in his dream, though it was inside rather than outside. That made no logical sense, but it was true, and Julian rushed down the remaining steps, acutely aware of the fact that his son’s screams had stopped, that the basement was silent. He could hear his own footfalls and the thumping of blood in his ears, but nothing else.
Reaching the bottom, he crossed the few feet it took to get to the edge of the hole and peered down. An arm’s length below the surface, not holding desperately on to a small protruding root, as in his dream, but caught on that root by the back of his pajamas, was James.
Instantly, Julian flopped onto the ground on his stomach, stretching his arm down in an effort to grab the boy. Unlike in the dream, he was able to reach, and his fingers grasped the curved collarless pajama top. He started to pull but realized that James might be too heavy for him to hold with one hand. The material of the pajama top might rip as well. Adjusting himself, scooting forward, Julian used both hands, getting one under each of his son’s armpits, and, wiggling backward, managed to pull him up and out.
He fell backward onto the hard cement floor, holding the boy to him, tears rolling down his cheeks. It took him a moment to realize that James was limp in his arms, and for a brief, heart-stopping second, he thought that he’d failed, that he hadn’t saved his son, that the boy was dead. But then he felt movement beneath his hands, looked into James’s face, saw the fluttering of his eyelids and knew he was alive. The boy was hurt, though. There were bruises on his face and dried blood in his ears, and while he might be alive, he wasn’t conscious.
Julian stood, reached down and picked his son up, the way he had when he was a baby. He wasn’t a baby anymore, though, was almost too heavy to carry up the stairs, but Julian did it.
He expected to be stopped, expected roadblocks to be put up, expected some sort of opposition, but he was allowed to reach the top of the steps, walk through the kitchen and leave the house without incident. James was getting really heavy, and Julian kept talking to him as he staggered down the driveway toward the car, hoping for a response. There was none, but that didn’t stop him from trying, and he continued asking James whether he was all right, kept on begging him to wake up, even as he placed him temporarily upright and leaned the boy’s weight against himself so he could get the rear door of the car open.
Déjà vu. This was twice in two days he’d had to do this with one of his children, and it was just as awful and frightening the second time around. After maneuvering his son onto the backseat and quickly closing the door, Julian immediately got in, started the car, swerved backward onto the street and headed for the hospital.
It was déjà vu in more ways than one. He thought of the way James had been calling for him, crying out desperately for help.
“Daddy!”
He had sounded almost exactly like Miles.
But he wasn’t Miles.
And he was alive.
Julian lied.
As soon as he knew that both kids were going to be all right, he left Claire at the hospital, telling her that he was going to get Megan’s iPhone and James’s DS so that the two of them would have something to do besides watch TV. But he had no intention of returning to his in-laws’ place or picking up anything.
He was heading back to his house.
He had no plan, didn’t know what he was going to do, but for the past twenty-four hours everything he knew, everything he’d learned, everything he’d seen, everything that had happened had all been swirling around in his mind, and he was sure the answer was in there somewhere, if only he could find the key to unlock it. Maybe if he went back to the house, it might trigger something in his brain, give him an idea, help him figure out what to do. Because his father-in-law was missing, and both his son and daughter were in the hospital. It needed to end here. He had to put a stop to this. Now. Before something even worse happened.
He’d considered asking Rick to come with him. He would have liked some moral support as well as the additional muscle, but he refused to drag another person into this. Enough people had been put in harm’s way already. This was something he needed to do himself. Although even as the thought occurred to him, Julian recognized its essential stupidity. Police didn’t go after criminals alone. Firemen didn’t fight fires alone. He recognized also that the idea that he should go into that house by himself was not his own. It had been placed in his brain, implanted there. He did not fight it, though, did not slow down or call Rick or Patrick for help, but increased his speed so he would get to the house faster.
His cell phone rang. Julian picked it up, glanced down at the number of the caller, then automatically answered and said, “Hello,” before it registered that the call was coming from their house.
“I’ll get both of them next time. Megan and James. And your little wifey, too. Did you get my note? I’ll rape her good and hard. In the ass, the way she likes it best—”