She stared at him.
He sighed. “And I’m pure confusing the living hell out of you, aren’t I? Well, that’s another part of how dreams work. This is your dream, Rain. Not mine. I always make sense in my dreams. You have different filters, do you understand?”
“I don’t know.”
“Think on it.”
Around them and all through the park, fireflies burned in a thousand shades of green and blue and red. Caster held out a finger and one landed on it, tiny and lovely. He blew it away with a kiss. “The trick is for each person to find his or her own way to put the puzzle pieces together. You know almost enough now to make sense of it, Rain. Really.”
“Nothing makes sense,” she repeated, leaning on the words, filling them with anger.
“You believe that now, and that’s part of the problem,” said Caster. “As long as you think this is a mystery, then it’ll be a mystery. As long as you think this is a war, then it’s a war. As long as you think that you’re helpless, then you’ll be helpless. That’s how it’s always worked.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“Give it time,” said Caster, then he glanced up at the clock. “But not too much time. The clocks won’t be broken forever.”
“What?” she asked.
He turned back, and now there was no smile on his face. “Your time is coming, Rain. It’s coming very soon. Your time is coming back to you. Time is never lost. It’s being kept in trust and it will be given back, and you’re going to have to decide what to do with it. Shhh, don’t speak; listen. He is alive in your life. You called him into reality the same way your mother did and so many others did, and do, and have done, and will do. He is easy to invite into your life, but he is a difficult houseguest to evict. You’ve made him comfortable, and he loves you so. He needs you so, and so far, you are becoming everything he could ever want.”
“I don’t understand any of that.”
“You do, but you don’t think you do.” Caster took a hip flask from his pocket, unscrewed the top, and took a swig, then his smile crept back. Dimmer, but still a good smile. “Maybe it’s time to wake up.”
“None of this is making any sense.”
“Yet,” he said.
“What?”
The phone woke her up. And then Bug started barking.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
He’s almost all the way through.
It was that thought more than the ringing phone or her dog’s high, sharp barks that woke Rain up. She fought against being awake because she did not want to leave the Fire Zone. She didn’t want to lose her grip on those words. The phone won, though, and she fell back into the now. Bug hopped and danced on the bed. Rain pushed the dog aside, clawed for her cell, stabbed the green button.
“What?” she growled.
“Rain?” said a familiar voice. “Is it okay that I called?”
“Oh,” she said, sitting up and rubbing her face with her free hand. “Sticks? Oh, yeah, sure. I guess. Bug, hush!” The dog stopped barking but watched her, crooked tail swishing back and forth. Rain coughed her throat clear. “Um … hi.”
“Hi. Look,” began Sticks, “I’ve been thinking a lot about this morning, and I hate how we left things.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Me, too.”
“I’m sorry,” said Sticks.
“Yeah,” said Rain, “me, too. I’ve been going through some stuff lately. All that craziness I told you about, and some other stuff. I’m not exactly rewarding company for anyone.”
“Maybe,” said Sticks, “but what happened at American Dollar was my bad.”
“No,” she said, “and it’s sweet of you to try to take the hit. I shouldn’t have tried to pressure you about helping me.”
“Okay, sure,” said Sticks. “It’s all your fault and you’re a terrible bitch.”
Rain burst out laughing. “God, I am so going to kick your ass.”
He laughed, too, and when the laughter died out, the silence that followed hovered somewhere between comfortable and uncomfortable, as if neither of them knew which card to play next.
Rain said, “I dreamed about the Fire Zone again. Just now. I took a nap and I went there.”
“Really?” he said at once, his interest immediate and intense. “What happened?”
She told him as much of the dream as she could remember. Torquemada’s, Snakedancer, and the old repairman, Caster Bootey.
“Caster! That’s great,” said Sticks with evident delight. “I love him. Tell me, was he all cryptic and shit? Sounds really helpful but doesn’t answer anything straight out?”
“Yes.” She paused. “You do realize that this conversation is surreal, right? I mean like crazy we-need-serious-help surreal.”
“No joke.”
“What’s it all mean?”
“I have no idea,” admitted Sticks.
“It scares me. What if I am crazy after all?” she whispered.
“Then,” he said, “it means I’m really part of your dream. I’ve been worse things to people.”
“Me, too, I guess.”
“Look,” said Sticks, “I thought about things, and I made a decision. It scares the shit out of me, but it’s something I want to do. Or maybe I need to do it. Not sure. But here goes … why don’t I pick you up at your place tomorrow morning? Let’s see if the ol’ Red Rocket can find Boundary Street.” He paused and then corrected himself. “We’ll see if we can find a way to drive into the actual Fire Zone. Both of us. Awake. And together. How’s that sound?”
She took so long fumbling for an answer, he asked if she was still on the line.
“That’s great,” she said, half lying. “Thanks.”
“Don’t thank me yet. We could both be doing something really fucking stupid.”
She knew that wasn’t what he really meant to say. Not stupid. He meant to say it was dangerous. She sensed that he was aware of it, too, and of her knowing it.
“Tomorrow,” she said, and then she ended the call.
A few moments later, though, she received a text that said, “Outside your apartment 10 AM.” Rain took a few deep, calming breaths. Allegedly calming. That was tomorrow and there was still tonight to get through.
He’ll make you sorry if you say anything, her parasite told her.
“I know,” she said aloud.
He’ll hurt you if you tell Sticks about him.
Rain felt like she was next to nothing at all. Small, weak, poor, unloved, a failure. “Doctor Nine can’t hurt me anymore,” she said. “I’ve got nothing left to lose. I already lost Dylan. What else is there?”
Bug suddenly began barking. Not her playful bark or the challenging bark she used with other dogs. This was the abrupt high-pitched bark of immediate and intense fear. Rain looked down at her and then followed Bug’s line of sight. The bathroom. The door was almost closed, the light off.
She had left the door open and the light on.
That’s when she heard the soft, unmistakable sound of quiet laughter.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
Rain stood there and stared at the bathroom door. Her legs trembled and her heart slammed over and over again at the inside of her chest. Bug kept barking, but she would not move an inch closer to the bathroom.
“No,” she said as if saying it could make it so. As if that word could push reset on the moment.
I warned you, but you’re too stupid to even listen.
The knife was in the strainer, and Rain began edging toward the sink, careful not to make a noise, not even a sock scuff on the floor.
He knows you were going to tell, said the parasite. He knows. He always knows.
Bug growled, but began backing away, crouching low to the floor. The bathroom door creaked. Ever so slightly. Half a creak. It could have been the building settling on its old bones. Rain knew that. It could have been an intruder breeze stealing in through a crack in the wall.
Sure. Bullshit.
Rain took another soft step towar
d the sink, and then a board creaked beneath her weight. She froze, staring at the door as if expecting it to whip open and vomit forth a tall shape with a pale, smiling face and only black pits where his eyes should be. Or maybe the nurse, grinning through her red lipstick, green eyes filled with malice and bad ideas. She did not dare move. Bug stopped making any sound and stood frozen to the spot, hair standing stiff. Rain’s hand was stretched out, fingertips almost touching the handle of the knife. If she leaned she could …
Creak.
As she shifted toward the knife, the floor groaned beneath her again. Louder. The bathroom door moved, too. A half inch. Less. Enough to draw a faint cry from the hinges that was every bit as loud as the creaking floorboard. Rain hung there, needing the knife but afraid to make another sound in case …
Suddenly, every light in her apartment went out, plunging everything in shadows and stillness and silence. Rain stopped breathing.
Circuit breaker, she told herself, mouthing the words to give them reality.
Rain snatched at the knife, and the blade rasped along the wire mesh of the strainer. The handle was cold and real in her hand, and she brought it up, blade toward the bathroom, clutching it both hands, holding it like a talisman. Between her and—
And what?
Him? It?
The bathroom door creaked again as it moved another half inch open. She could see only shadows inside.
“I have a knife,” she said, her voice unnaturally loud in the brown stillness.
Nothing. No sound at all. The bathroom door was five steps away; the door to the hall was six but in the other direction. One choice made no sense at all; the other was obvious to anyone but an idiot in a schlocky horror movie. She knew what she should do, but indecision pinned her in place. This was her home. Not his. Not Doctor Nine’s. He wasn’t allowed to be in here. No one was. Rain did not have much, but she had this apartment. Small and cold, with too few amenities and too many cockroaches, but it was hers.
The door creaked once more, moving an inch this time. Bolder. A statement, maybe.
“I’m not afraid of you,” she said, trying to make the lie sound like a threat.
A voice answered her, but it did not come from the cobwebs in her head. It came from inside the bathroom. It said, “Yes, you are.”
Rain stared, mouth open. It was real. It was a man’s voice—his voice. He was here, speaking with oily sweetness from the bathroom. Bug screeched like she’d been kicked, and she vanished beneath the bed. Rain gripped the knife so hard her flesh squeaked on the handle.
“You’re not real!” she cried.
“If I’m not real, little Lorraine, then neither are you.”
“What do you want from me?”
Doctor Nine released a long, amused, nasty sigh filled with ugliness and appetite. “I already have what I want from you, my dear. You gave it to me, and what a sweet and lovely gift it was. So full of pink promise. As unspoiled as a fresh-picked peach.”
“I didn’t give you shit.”
Doctor Nine’s voice changed, becoming her voice, repeating her own words. “‘I’ve got nothing left to lose. I already lost Dylan. What else is there?’”
Dylan.
Rain almost dropped the knife. Her skin seemed to suddenly be made of thin ice, fragile and ready to crack at the slightest touch.
“No,” she whispered.
“Oh, yes,” said Doctor Nine in his own voice. “And do you know how long I’ve longed to know that name? To know his name? Dylan. Such a delicious name. Ray. Of. Hope.” He spaced out each word as if he were taking a small bite and savoring the taste.
In Rain’s mind, the little boy ran screaming down the aisle of the subway train. “Please,” she cried, “don’t hurt him!”
“Hurt him?” Doctor Nine sounded genuinely surprised. “I would never lay a finger on him.”
“Give him back!”
“Ohhhhhh, sorry, but you see, I can’t. He’s with us now. This is where he wants to be. With me. Always with me.”
There was a new sound from the bathroom. A gurgling, choking, gasping, desperate cry and with it was the crinkly rasp of her plastic shower curtain. Then there was a heavy thud, a screech of metal as something pulled too hard on her curtain rod. Rain stood erect, the knife forgotten in her hands, listening to the soft, awful sounds of feet kicking at the wall. She did not dare close her eyes, because she knew what she would see. The pipes in the other building, the kick-marks on the walls. She already had imagined it with enough razor clarity to carve it into her mind as surely as if she’d stood and witnessed that boy step off the ladder and fall.
Fall but not far enough. Not all the way to the ground. Fall, but far enough for what he wanted to do. The thumps and kicks shook the thin walls.
Then Rain was moving. “No!” she wailed. “Dylan … Mommy’s coming! Dylan … Dylan!”
She rushed the bathroom door, ready to cut Doctor Nine. Ready to slash and chop through the knotted plastic curtain. To cut the jerking body down. But as she reached out, the bathroom door slammed shut hard enough to rattle the glass in the windows. She skidded to a stop, beating at the door with one fist and chopping at it with the knife.
Then hands reached around her from behind.
Cold, damp, smelling of rot and dead fish and shit. One clamped onto her knife wrist, stopping her with the tip of the blade driven half an inch into the wood. The other encircled her waist, fingers splayed so that the little finger and ring finger were low on her belly. His weight leaned against her. So cold. So strong. She tried to turn, tried to fight, tried to move. Doctor Nine pressed himself against her. Rain could feel him. He was real. He was right there. She could feel the lean hardness of his body. Thighs like carved marble, a chest like a wall. She could feel him press his groin against her back. His cock was hard and immense, and even through the fabric of his clothes and hers, Rain could feel how cold it was. He leaned his mouth against her ear, and his breath was like the fetid breeze from an open crypt. He smelled of things that rotted but did not want to die. His tongue, wrinkled and clammy as a worm, licked a slow, wet line along the outer edge of her ear, tracing its shape.
“Thank you,” he murmured. “Oh, my little Lorraine, thank you so much.”
He pushed her against the door. It was a sharp, sudden shove that mashed her face and breasts and stomach into the wood with such shocking force that she felt flattened. Then the pressure was gone and she started to sag down.
But with a howl of rage, Rain whirled and chopped backward with the knife.
And cut nothing.
The room behind her was empty.
Almost.
There, on the floor where he had been standing, were maggots. Hundreds of them, clinging together to form the shape of two shoeprints. Then they burst apart and wriggled away in all directions. Rain screamed and ran for the hallway door, twisted the knob and pulled, and nearly tore her fingernails off when the door did not budge. The dead bolt was set, and the keys were in her purse. Rain spun and put her back to the door, the knife raised high to stab.
The lights came on.
The bathroom door was all the way open. That light was on, too.
Rain stood with her back to the door, eyes and mouth wide, pulse fluttering, trying to understand something, anything, about this. The metal rod above the tub was torn halfway out and sagged down. The curtain was gone. There was no body. There was no Dylan. There was nothing. In the bathroom or anywhere. The knife clattered from her hand.
“I’m sorry,” she said, though her chest hitched and her voice broke over the words. “Oh, baby, I’m so sorry…”
A voice whispered to her from deep inside her mind. It was like a wind that blew through the empty rooms of her soul, past the Box of Rain, through a nursery that was never painted and a house that was never a home.
Why did you do it, Mommy? Dylan’s voice was a little child’s voice. Too young to bear the weight of the things that had happened. Why did you tell him my name?
>
Rain snatched up the knife and stabbed it down into the floor. The tip bit deep. She gave it a savage back-and-forth wrench, tore it free, stabbed again. And again. And again.
From under the bed, her little dog whimpered like a frightened baby.
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
Gay Bob kept writing. Wanting to, fearing it, needing it.
He had showered and put on boxers, but that was it. He had a pump pot filled with coffee, and he drank it boiled, black, and bitter. He had hip-hop playing very loudly and on random shuffle. He never heard a word of it, though. The last of the pills, a red one, sat on the edge of his keyboard.
He named it. Called it the Little Red Monster. In his fever of writing, of being only half-awake, he thought he could hear it whisper to him.
Don’t write any more, it said. You know he doesn’t want you to.
“Shut up,” he told the Little Red Monster.
Listen to me, it insisted. Swallow me. Let’s go play where it’s nice and safe.
Gay Bob sometimes had to stop and punch his thighs with his fists until the Little Red Monster shut up. Or until the pain in his thighs screamed louder. Whatever.
He kept writing. About Doctor Nine and the nurse. About the Mulatto. About all the shadowy people who had driven in that big, black Cadillac over the years. Over the many, many years.
He wrote and wrote and wrote, and sometimes he simply stopped and nothing happened. He never noticed that two hours were gone from his life.
Two very important hours.
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
Rain wanted to pray, but she was pretty sure no one was up there listening.
Not that she had lost all belief in God—she had a smidge of faith left—it’s just that she did not believe for one moment that the Eternal All gave a crooked damn about her. At some of the rehab centers and even among the NA crowd, there were plenty of people who shouted that God loves and God forgives and God looks out for all his children; but Rain had plenty of proof to the contrary.
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