“I’ll carry her,” Brad said submissively. “In my arms.”
“I think my arm is broken,” Bostwick stated, fashioning a sling from a piece of blanket.
“Does it hurt?”
“Like a bastard. But not for long,” he said, preparing an injection of Demerol, a potent painkiller.
Thomasine said nothing.
They resumed their trip, heading deeper into the cave, the walls narrowing, the roof lowering until the passageway was tunnel size. They rounded a bend and emerged into a cavern. The sight pulled their breath away. Unlike the rest of the cave, this chamber was white, all white, white as chalk, the purest and softest form of limestone. The walls were smooth and domed, like an igloo. An igloo with a ceiling that must have been a hundred feet at its apex.
But it was not the shape or color of the chamber that was so stunning. It was what was situated in the middle of it: a rock platform, perhaps ten feet in height, flat on top. Like the mesa in the pniese. Arranged in a circle around the border were flares, smoky and flickering. Charlie smelled burning pine mixed with an occasional whiff of something more pungent. Cedar perhaps.
At the lip of the ledge, seated on a polished, flattened stone reminiscent of a throne, was a man, a white-haired, ponytailed man who looked to be of great age. He was dressed in the traditional garb of a Quidneck sachem: mantle and leggings, with a colorfully decorated band of hawk feathers around his head. He was alone.
It must be Hobbamock, Charlie thought, with less than certainty. He remembered pniese, so grotesquely pornographic. This man—if indeed he was a man—was not the lewd being of pniese. The sense of righteousness and omnipotence Charlie’d felt suddenly abandoned him, leaving him strangely anesthetized. Until the moment they’d rounded this bend, he’d been plugged in. A man possessed. Now the lines were down, the circuits dead. A trick, he reminded himself. Another trick. Probably not his last.
Charlie held up his hand to signal silence. It was an unnecessary gesture. The sight of the cavern, so blindingly white, and the stone table, and especially the figure atop it was mesmeric. The adults stared, slack-jawed. Hesitantly Abbie peered over Brad’s shoulder.
“That’s him,” Charlie whispered.
But it can’t be, Brad thought. This is someone’s grandfather, venerable and wise. The good Indian god’s grandfather. He’s going to tell our fortunes, give us each a lucky charm, and tell us to be on our way. Good luck and God bless.
The sachem stood and pondered them a moment. A kindly smile blossomed on his face. “Abbie,” he said in a sonorous, benign voice, “I have waited a long time to meet you. I have heard so much about you. So much.”
Abbie clung desperately to her father. As afraid as she’d been of the ghoul-doctor, as hot and prickly and aching as she still was, she was surprisingly alert. Surprisingly curious. The methamphetamine was approaching zenith.
“You look scared,” the sachem continued, sounding terribly disappointed. “But I won’t hurt you, Abbie. I promise. I only want to have a word with you. I want you to come forward, Abbie. And after we talk, I will have something very nice for such a good little girl. Something very nice.”
The range, Charlie thought. We don’t have the range yet. We’ve got to get closer. Gently he tried to pry Abbie from Brad, but she wouldn’t be budged.
“Closer,” he whispered to Brad. “We have to get her closer.”
“What is taking so long?” the sachem asked. “Is there a problem, Charlie?” he asked familiarly.
Charlie did not answer. With Abbie in her father’s clutches, he and Brad approached the mesa.
CHAPTER SEVENTY
Wednesday, December 24
Evening
In the room at Berkshire Medical Center that had become her home, too, Ginny Ellis sponged sweat off Jimmy’s forehead again and bent to kiss him. He did not respond. He had not responded to her or anyone in more than twenty-four hours, not even the flutter of an eyelash to suggest he was there.
“Jimmy,” she whispered, desperate for this to be the time she finally got through, “I love you. I’ll always love you, big guy.”
Breathing. Only breathing, the increasingly irregular heave and fall of his five-and-a-half-year-old chest.
If there was any slim comfort for Ginny this Christmas Eve, it was the presence of her mother. Mrs. Fitzpatrick had shut the Boar’s Head for the duration of her family’s ordeal and came every morning now at seven-thirty.
The clock over the nurses’ station read 10:05 P.M.
“He doesn’t seem any worse,” Ginny said, with a wistful hopefulness her mother didn’t have the heart to contradict. Then she added, “Don’t believe everything doctors tell you. Doctors aren’t God, you know, Mom.”
“No,” Mrs. Fitzpatrick said, “they’re not.”
“He’ll come ‘round, I know he will.”
“I pray that he does, honey. Every minute I pray that he does.”
Ginny trailed a hand over her son’s distended abdomen. She could feel it through the cotton johnny: an almost blistering heat, the same heat that radiated everywhere she touched, whether his forehead or his wrist or his arm. Good, she thought. A very good sign. He’s hot because his body is giving it its all.
Early in parenthood, her mind had sprung the most terrifying image on her. It was right after her husband had died—probably not more than a month—and Jimmy, barely a toddler, had come down with the croup. Bostwick had urged her to keep a watchful eye on him, and that first night she brought her son into bed with her, settling him in the hollow in the Sealy mattress that his father had dug over the years. Every rasping breath Jimmy took that nightmarish night—every agonizingly endless pause between inhaling and exhaling—brought fresh fear to her throat. What if this is his last breath? she wondered, time after time after time. Or this? Or the next one? How could I ever go on living, knowing I had witnessed it in such lurid detail?
But that wasn’t the most frightening image her mind popped on her, her only child drawing his final breath. It was the image of her son’s body cooling, the molecules or whatever they were of his body heat dissipating into the atmosphere, his vitality draining away like ebb tide on a beach. Most dreadful was knowing that long after his last breath, long after his skin had turned purple and cold, ice cold—hours after, even—she could probably turn her dead son over . . . and the mattress and sheet below, insulated by the rigid thickness of his corpse, would still be warm to the touch.
She lightly massaged Jimmy’s stomach again.
He’s still warm, she reassured herself. They’re wrong, that’s all. Jimmy’s not dying. He’s just . . . very sick.
But of course, he wasn’t just very sick. He was dying, and Mrs. Fitzpatrick sensed it as surely as she sensed the never-never land her daughter resided in these days. It had come as little surprise to her when, just before suppertime, the doctor substituting for Bostwick had shown them the latest test results and gently made his pronouncements about Jimmy’s chances for lasting another twenty-four hours. They were not favorable, he was terribly sorry to have to say. If they had a family clergyman, well, they might not be ill advised to seek his solace.
“Charlie would want to know,” Mrs. Fitzpatrick said when the doctor was done. “He would want to be here, and you should let him.”
Ginny turned that over for a moment. So Mom wanted Charlie here. Charlie, whom Ginny blamed, at least in some measure, for all of this. Charlie, who had betrayed her and Jimmy. Charlie, who . . . she could not go on. The simple truth was it didn’t matter about Charlie anymore. If Mom thought he should be here, she would defer to her judgment. She would relent.
“Yes,” she said, “I should let him. But not because Jimmy’s . . . not because of what the doctor said.”
“No,” Mrs. Fitzpatrick agreed.
“Just because . . . well, it’s almost Christmas. Holidays are for families.”
“Yes,” Mrs. Fitzpatrick said, “because it’s almost Christmas.”
“And,
well, I suppose I’ve been a little—a little selfish, too.”
“You’ve been under tremendous pressure, honey,” the old woman said.
“Yes,” Ginny agreed, “I have. We all have. Charlie can come.”
Except Charlie wasn’t to be found. He had no phone, of course, but Mrs. Fitzpatrick had managed to convince the Morgantown police chief, an old friend, to send one of his men out to the Quidneck’s cabin. He’d returned around seven, reporting that Charlie was not there. Nor, the officer said, did it appear he’d been there in quite some time. His Cherokee was gone, and there was a foot of virgin snow in his drive, untouched by foot or tire.
Mrs. Fitzpatrick asked the chief to have his men be on the lookout for him, although she could give them no definite idea of where he might be. Surely he would not have left town unannounced, as he was sometimes wont to do? Not on Christmas Eve. Not when he’d promised to come for Christmas dinner, and his nephew, his beloved nephew, lying so sick in a hospital bed . . .
She was lost in these ruminations when, at 10:10 P.M., Jimmy’s condition suddenly and precipitously deteriorated.
First, his breathing went haywire. It had been irregular, but now, as his mother and grandmother watched in terror, he began to cough. Once, twice, three times, accelerating until his entire body was convulsed. The hacking continued, intensified, until Mrs. Fitzpatrick was terrified that he would flop off his bed onto the floor. She had just pressed the call button when Jimmy’s mouth opened and blood-tinged bile surged out in a stream of foam. Vomit frothed onto his chin, down his chin to his neck, from his neck onto the johnny top, discoloring it, fouling the room with a stench that burned their nostrils. Some slid back down his throat, activating the gag reflex. He was choking. He was choking, and he was unaware, unable to help himself.
Ginny screamed. From a waitress job many summers ago she remembered the Heimlich maneuver. She started it on her son.
Mrs. Fitzpatrick recited a silent prayer and tried to prepare herself for the end, knowing what they were about to endure would be replayed in their nightmares as long as she and her daughter lived.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE
Wednesday, December 24
Late
“It’s almost Christmas,” Hobbamock said to Abbie as she, Charlie, and Brad approached. “Only a little while. Did you give Santa your list? No? Of course not. You were sick this year. I’m so sorry you were sick this year, Abbie. It isn’t any fun to be sick, is it, Abbie?”
The girl listened, spellbound.
“I’d like to help make you feel better. I’d like to help you have a merry Christmas after all. How about your puppy? Would seeing your puppy be a nice Christmas gift, Abbie? You haven’t seen Maria in a while, I know. They won’t let you have puppies in the hospital. Such poor sports. But even if they did, you couldn’t have seen her. Do you know why?”
Instinctively Abbie shook her head.
“Because your daddy killed her, that’s why. Cracked her skull open with a shovel, right there on the floor of your garage. I know it’s very hard to believe, but it’s true. Why don’t you ask him?”
Abbie looked up at her father, cradling her in his arms, expecting him to deny it. But he did not deny it. A look of guilt spread across his face. A look Abbie plainly saw. Her whole body tensed. She was thinking about lying and what the rhamphorhynchus had said that afternoon at Berkshire Medical.
“I didn’t think he’d admit it,” Hobbamock continued, “but it doesn’t matter now. I can bring Maria back. And if you’d like, I will.”
Abbie’s eyes brightened.
Suddenly there was the dog, lying contentedly at Hobbamock’s feet.
“Maria!” Abbie managed to say.
“Yes, Maria. Would you like to pat your doggy?” the god asked. “I bet you would, after not seeing her all this time. And you can. All you have to do is come up here. If your father and Charlie will lead you around to the left, you’ll see a set of stairs. Very small stairs, built for all my special visitors. You come up here, and after we have our little talk, I’ll let you pat your dog. If you’re really good, I’ll even let you have your dog back. For good. How’s that? I think that’s very generous, considering we’ve just met.”
Charlie and Brad plodded forward. Abbie was unbearably heavy in Brad’s arms, but Charlie had insisted she not even try to walk; it was necessary for her to save her strength, however low her drug-enhanced reserves of it might be, for the encounter. Brad gritted his teeth and pushed forward. They were not fifty feet from the stone platform now, and the floor here was polished, smooth, free of the rocks that had impeded their progress before. Even the river, which flowed from a grotto to the right, seemed calmer, more ordered.
They advanced, Hobbamock seeming to welcome them with benign expression and arms outstretched.
He doesn’t know we have the spear, Charlie thought with an almost uncontrollable exhilaration. It was a completely ridiculous idea, that they could have come this close without the god’s somehow divining it, but there was no other conclusion he could draw now. Why else would he let us approach? He must think he’s leading us—her—into a trap. Maybe he’s even forgotten the existence of the spear. It has been so long, even by Hobbamock’s timeless standards. Decades and decades, sealed inside this cave. Maybe even gods forget. Maybe gods go crazy, too, alone for so long.
“Would you like to see your mommy now?” Hobbamock asked, and now Charlie heard it distinctly: the sardonic edge to his voice, too subtle for a child to catch.
“No . . .” Abbie whimpered. “I want . . . home.”
“I can bring her here, too, if you’d like. And heaven knows you haven’t seen her in an awfully long time. An awfully long time, just like Maria. I bet you were probably beginning to think she didn’t love you, weren’t you, Abbie?”
“I wanna go home, Daddy. I wanna see . . . Maria.”
“But Maria’s here,” Hobbamock continued. “If you went home, why, all you’d see would be the stains, dark and still sticky on the garage floor. Isn’t that right, Mr. Gale? Wasn’t it a terrible time you had trying to erase the traces? And you never were entirely successful. I know. I’ve had a firsthand report. I’m told the whole affair was very, very shameful. I’m told there was alcohol involved. Tsk, tsk.”
“It’s . . . not . . . true . . . Apple Guy,” Brad lied in voice shaking so badly he was sure it would die before he’d spit his sentence out.
“Don’t listen to him,” Charlie agreed. “He’s making it all up.”
They kept moving, Charlie slowing the pace, trying to stretch every step out. He was mentally measuring the distance, calculating how far a girl of her age, in her fragile health (fragile health? without Bostwick’s drug, she’d be dead), might be able to chuck it. Twenty-five feet? Never. Twenty? Too risky. Charlie knew they had only one shot. She had to connect on the first try. A miss—and Hobbamock would grab it, or one of his creatures would grab it, or he would simply leave it lying on the ground, impotent out of the child’s hands, while he proceeded to annihilate them all. He had the power to do that, no question. The bear, the rhamphorhynchus, the ghoul-doctor—those had been amusement rides for Hobbamock. Fun and games. When it was time to get serious, Charlie knew, Hobbamock would go for the kill. That had been the point Charlie’s father had emphasized every time he’d told the tale.
If only they could make it to the base of the ledge before he caught on, they would be ten feet away, twelve at most. She might be able to throw that far. Would have to be able to.
“ ‘Don’t listen to me’?” the god repeated. “Is that what I heard you say, Charlie? What a silly, arrogant thing to tell this poor child. And such a lie. It’s him you shouldn’t listen to, Abbie. He’s the one who sicced the wolf on Jimmy. Who made you so sick. Who killed Maureen. Who wants to kill you, too. He and your dad, the two of them in league together, just as the rhamphorhynchus kept trying to tell you. If only you’d listened, I don’t think you’d be in such a jam now.”
; “No . . .” Abbie cried.
“I think you’d be a happy girl, not this sad little thing I see in front of me now.”
“No.”
“But it’s true.”
They moved closer.
“My dad loves me . . .”
“That’s what he says. But he lies, Abbie. Just like your mommy. And Charlie. All the adults—liars. But I wouldn’t lie to you. I just want to have a little talk with you. Sit you on my lap, like Santa Claus, and have a little talk about where you’d like to live. When you’re all better. Because I’m going to do that, too, if you’re very good: make you better. No more of this sickness, these hospitals and doctors. Not when you’re with me.”
Closer.
And closer.
They were almost directly beneath him. Almost close enough.
Abbie was blinded with tears. Brad tried to soothe her, but she would not accept his kindness. She didn’t believe what that nasty old man up there was saying about her dad, or her mom, or Charlie, couldn’t tell if that dog by the old man’s feet really was Maria (one minute it looked like Maria, and the next it didn’t, didn’t even look alive).
But she didn’t know anything anymore. Didn’t know if her body was really back in the hospital, and this was just another place for her mind to wander around in, a new place, a parallel place to the place where you walked through endless shadows—a cartoon artist’s world where things weren’t quiet or dim or cool, but moved too fast, or too slow, or were too crazy or too big. Never the way they were supposed to be.
All she knew was that she didn’t want to be here. Was afraid here. In her veins she could feel the sudden strength she’d been given start to sputter. The aching, the pain, the hotness—just outside the door now.
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