Midnight Voices

by John Saul

  A cackle of laughter chased Ryan as he dashed up the stairs, a cackle that was still echoing through the stairwell when he got to the fifth floor.

  As he opened the front door, he called out to his sister.

  There was no answer.

  But somehow the apartment didn’t feel empty.

  “M-mom?” he called out, hearing the nervous stammer in his own voice. “Anybody home?”

  There was no reply, yet he still had the feeling he wasn’t alone in the huge maze of rooms.

  Maybe he should go upstairs. Go to his room, and lock the door, and wait for his mother to come home.

  But if there was somebody in here, wasn’t that where they’d be? Upstairs, where they could catch him so far from the door he’d never have a chance to get out?

  Maybe he should run back downstairs.

  Or maybe he was just being a baby. Maybe there wasn’t anybody here at all. Screwing up his courage, he called out again. “Hey, I’m home! Anybody here?”

  Silence.

  Steeling his nerve, he moved away from the front door until he could peer into the living room and the dining room.

  They looked just like they had this morning.

  He started down the hall toward the kitchen when he suddenly paused.

  The door to Tony’s study—the door that was usually closed—was standing slightly ajar.

  Frowning, he edged toward the door until he could just peek inside. From where he stood, it seemed to be empty, but he couldn’t really see much of it at all. Reaching out, struggling to keep his hand from trembling, he pushed the door further open.

  It creaked on its hinges, startling him so badly he jumped a foot backward. Then, when he realized what had happened, he edged forward again, and finally crossed the threshold into his stepfather’s study.

  It was filled with the same musty smell the rest of the apartment held, and if anything, everything in the room looked even older then the stuff in the other rooms. His curiosity finally overcoming his fear, Ryan began exploring the room.

  The walls were all paneled with some kind of dark wood, and the two windows overlooking the street let in so little light that the dark green leather that covered every piece of furniture in the room looked almost black. A thin rug covered the floor, its pattern mostly obscured by not only a huge old sofa, and an easy chair with an ottoman in front of it, but a bunch of tables that were covered with all kinds of things: faded pictures in tarnished silver frames, pieces of carved ivory, all kinds of small objects. There was a big desk at the end of the room where the windows were, and a fireplace set into one of the walls. Bookcases covered the wall on either side of the fireplace, and a big globe stood in one of the corners farthest from the desk.

  The easy chair sat close by the fireplace, and next to it was a lamp table with an extra shelf built down close to the floor.

  On the shelf was what looked like a photo album, so old the finish on its leather cover was worn away.

  Picking up the album, Ryan laid it carefully on the lamp table, pulled the chain on the old-fashioned green-glass shaded lamp, then opened the album.

  The pictures looked so old Ryan was afraid they’d crumble if he so much as touched them, and even though they were in an album, they had begun to fade. But as he looked at the people in them—people dressed in old-fashioned clothes, the men in stiff-looking collars buttoned up to their necks, and uncomfortable-looking coats, the women in long dresses with rows of buttons going all the way up to their necks and lace around their wrists—he got a creepy feeling.

  Some of the faces looked almost familiar, like people he knew, but couldn’t quite place.

  He turned the pages carefully, terrified that if he so much as let them bend, they might break.

  Then, as he turned the fourth page, he froze.

  He stared at the image for a long time, unconsciously holding his breath. He was looking at a man who seemed to be sitting in this very room, in the easy chair by the fireplace.

  The man had strong features, and dark wavy hair, and his eyes were looking straight into the camera.

  It was the eyes that Ryan had instantly recognized.

  They were his stepfather’s eyes, gazing as coldly at him from out of the picture as Tony Fleming had stared at him in his room on Friday night.

  Seconds ticked by, and still Ryan stood looking at the picture, almost as if he was hypnotized. Now he could see that it wasn’t just the eyes that looked like Tony Fleming’s—everything about the man in the picture looked like his stepfather. But—

  Suddenly he sensed that he was no longer alone.

  Laurie.

  Maybe it was only Laurie.

  But even as he turned around, he knew it was not his sister who had come into the room.

  His stomach knotting with fear, he looked up to see his stepfather staring at him.

  “I—I—the door—” he stammered. “—it wasn’t locked, so I—”

  “So you came in,” Tony Fleming finished for him. He was silent for a moment, and Ryan held perfectly still, terrified of what might happen next. Then, to his surprise, his stepfather smiled slightly, and tipped his head toward the album that still lay open on the table. “And I see you found my family.”

  Ryan nodded mutely.

  Tony moved closer, leaning over to look at the page to which the album was opened.

  “Ah,” he breathed. “My great-grandfather. Taken in this very room.” His eyes shifted to Ryan. “The resemblance is remarkable, isn’t it?”

  Again Ryan nodded.

  “So,” Tony said, his voice still not rising, but taking on the same cold note Ryan had heard the other night. “Now you’ve seen my study. Do you like it?”

  “It—it’s kind of old-fashioned. I mean—”

  “It’s the way my great-grandfather liked it, and the way my grandfather and father liked it. And the way I like it. And it is not a place small boys should be poking around in.” Once again, his eyes fastened on Ryan. “Do you understand?”

  “Y-yes, sir,” Ryan breathed.

  “Good,” Tony said. “So we understand each other once again. Now, why don’t you and I go and begin fixing dinner for your mother and your sister.”

  Ryan looked uncertainly at his stepfather. “You—you’re not mad at me?”

  Tony shrugged. “I live here—you live here. I left the door open—you came in. I am as much at fault as you.” He carefully closed the album and put it back on the lower shelf of the table, then pulled the chain on the light. Steering Ryan out of the study, he closed the door behind him, then took a key from his pocket, put it in the lock, and twisted it.

  The lock clicked as the bolt shot home.

  “And what is that?” Tony asked, gazing at the bag in Ryan’s hand.

  “Fudge,” Ryan replied, barely able to believe he wasn’t going to be punished at all for going into his stepfather’s study. “Mr. Burton made it.”

  “Then you must write him a note, thanking him,” Tony said. “And will you share it with your sister?”

  Ryan hesitated, then nodded.

  “Good,” Tony said softly. “Very good.”

  CHAPTER 22

  There’s nothing wrong, Caroline told herself. There’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for Andrea’s not going to work today. It felt far later than five-thirty, but only part of the exhaustion that was threatening to overwhelm her had been brought on by her first day back at work. Her desk—actually nothing more than a table that had been moved from the shop into the back room, as she’d become busier and busier with Irene Delamond’s redecoration—had been stacked with work that had accumulated while she was gone. It seemed as if the contractor had passed every question that had come up from the subcontractors directly through to her, and she’d spent most of the day on the phone. But after the call from Andrea’s office asking if she’d heard from Andrea over the weekend, she’d found it harder and harder to concentrate on the wallpaper samples, paint chips, fabrics, and dozens of other
details comprising the updating not only of Irene Delamond’s apartment, but her own as well. Instead, she’d become more and more distracted worrying about Andrea, leaving half a dozen messages on her answering machine before giving up. She’d tried to tell herself that nothing was seriously wrong—that some emergency had come up, and she’d had to go out to Long Island. She’d even tried to find a phone number for Andrea’s parents, but they weren’t listed, and neither Bev nor Rochelle had had a number for them, either. She’d called Andrea once more before she left the shop, but this time the phone had simply rung and rung. Was that a good sign, or a bad sign? Now, as she walked the last block to The Rockwell, she went over it all one more time, but just as had happened all afternoon, she kept coming back to one unyielding fact: Andrea Costanza was simply not the kind of person who would take a day off without telling anyone.

  And no one, apparently, had either seen or heard from Andrea since Friday.

  But it still doesn’t mean anything, she silently insisted. She was in front of the building now, her hand already reaching for the handle of the heavy door. She could have—

  But there were no more could-haves. Caroline had gone through every one of them, and rejected them. So now, instead of pulling the door to The Rockwell open, she turned away and continued three more blocks up Central Park West, then turned left on 73rd. Her pace quickened as she crossed Columbus, then Amsterdam. But as she crossed Broadway, she suddenly stopped, for in the block ahead she could see flashing lights, several police cars, and some kind of truck that might have been an ambulance.

  All of it was halfway up the block, in front of Andrea’s building.

  It’s a big building. It could be anybody.

  But her pounding heart told her she was wrong, and she was almost running when she suddenly came to the yellow police tape—and the two uniformed cops—that blocked the sidewalk in front of Andrea’s building. “What’s wrong?” she asked, hearing the fear in her own voice.

  One of the cops spoke. “You live here?”

  Mutely, Caroline shook her head.

  “Then there’s nothing to see. Just move along.”

  Another voice spoke: an elderly woman who was clutching at the lapels of her coat as if the garment itself could somehow protect her from the dangers of the city. “It’s that nice woman on the fifth floor,” she said, shaking her head sadly. “Always had a nice word for everybody. Not like some of the people in the building. I always told Mr. Balicki—he’s the super you know—I always told him about some of the people. Having parties every night and playing their music ’til all hours. Satan’s music, that’s what they play. I always told Mr. Balicki something bad would happen. But he didn’t believe me. Nobody believes me. But now they’ll see. Came right in through the window. I was right all along. I said . . .”

  The old woman kept talking, droning on to whoever was closest, but Caroline had stopped listening. The front door to the building had just opened, and two men were maneuvering a gurney down the steps to the street.

  The body on the gurney was completely shrouded by a pale green sheet.

  It’s not Andrea, Caroline insisted, but even in her own head the words sounded far more like a wish than a fact. And then, as the men began loading the gurney into the back of the van, there was a flash of gray as a small schnauzer shot through the front door just before it closed, and began barking frantically.

  “Chloe?” The name of Andrea’s pet escaped Caroline’s lips almost involuntarily, but the little dog instantly stopped barking and turned, as if looking for whoever had spoken her name. “Oh, Chloe!” Caroline said, kneeling down as tears flooded her eyes. The dog leaped into her arms, its tongue licking at the tears running down her face, and Caroline clung to it, burying her face in Chloe’s soft fur as the full realization of what had happened began to sink in. As the van bearing Andrea Costanza’s body pulled away from the curb, Caroline finally turned away and started toward home, carrying Chloe with her.

  Caroline’s mind clung only to fragments of the rest of the evening. It was as if a movie had been chopped into tiny pieces, then reassembled so that only a few frames were left.

  She remembered opening the front door to the apartment, but had no memory of the walk home from Andrea’s building.

  She remembered talking to Rochelle and half a dozen other people, but could recall nothing of the conversations beyond the barest facts: Andrea is dead. Someone killed her. No forced entry. Came through the window.

  She remembered Ryan’s question when he saw Chloe: “Can we keep her? Please?” but there was no recollection of her answer.

  She remembered trying to eat dinner, but had no idea at all of what the food might have been, or whether she’d eaten any of it.

  After dinner Laurie and Ryan had escaped to their rooms, and she and Tony had gone into the living room. Except it didn’t really feel like a living room, not to Caroline. At least not her living room. Her living room—the only one that could have given her comfort—was the one in the apartment up on 76th Street where she and Brad had lived. That room had been small enough to offer her shelter, even after Brad had died. The room she was in now was so large that she felt somehow exposed and alone even though Tony was with her, and even though she herself had made certain the windows were locked, her eyes kept going to them as if she expected to see some faceless killer invading her home. Coming for her and her children as he’d come for her husband and her best friend. Tearing her gaze away from the windows, she turned her tear-streaked face toward Tony. “Why is this happening?” she asked. “Why did they kill Brad?”

  “Brad?” Tony repeated. “You said—”

  But it was as if Caroline didn’t hear him. “Why did they kill Andrea?” she went on. “What’s happening, Tony? Are they going to kill the children too? Are they going to kill Ryan? Laurie?” It was as if speaking her fears aloud opened whatever floodgates inside her had been holding her emotions in check through the long evening, and with a great shudder she threw her arms around Tony and clung to him. Tony’s arms tightened around her, and he pressed her face close to his chest, but instead of drawing warmth from him, she only shivered with a sudden chill. “Don’t, sweetheart,” he whispered. “Nothing’s going to happen. Not to you, and not to Laurie, and not to Ryan. I promise.”

  He was still holding her, still trying to soothe the terrible shaking that had overcome her, when the phone rang. Instinctively he reached for it, but hesitated. Maybe he should simply let the answering machine take the call. Then, as the phone rang again, he remembered the children. If it was someone else calling about Andrea, better for him to take the call himself. Still keeping one arm around Caroline, he picked up the phone.

  “Hello?”

  “Tony?” he heard an unsteady voice say. “It’s Beverly Amondson. I just got home, and Rochelle called about—”

  “We know,” Tony broke in, hearing the pain in Beverly’s voice.

  “Is Caroline all right? Should I come over?”

  Tony hesitated. Caroline was still sobbing, her body still shaking uncontrollably. “Maybe tomorrow,” he said. “Could you call her tomorrow?”

  “Of course,” Bev replied. Then: “Take care of her, Tony. To have this happen after what happened to Brad—well, I just don’t know how she’ll be able to handle it.”

  “It will be all right,” Tony assured her.

  “Thank you.” She was silent for a moment, then: “She’s so lucky to have you.”

  “No,” Tony said softly as he hung up the phone a moment later. “It’s me that’s the lucky one.”

  Putting the phone back on its cradle, he returned his full attention to soothing his distraught wife. “It’s all right,” he whispered. “I’m going to take care of you. You, and the children too.”

  CHAPTER 23

  The sound of the clock striking in the apartment’s large foyer echoed like a death knell in Caroline’s mind, and her body responded to every drop of the clock’s hammers with an involuntary twitch,
as if it were she herself who was being struck. As the resonance of the final chime faded away, Tony drew his wife even closer.

  “You have to sleep, darling. Staying awake all night won’t change anything.”

  “If I sleep, I’ll dream, and I know what I’ll dream about,” Caroline replied, her voice as hollow as the sound of the clock striking midnight.

  The children had been asleep for hours, and Tony had finally convinced Caroline to go to bed just before eleven. Neither of them had slept though; instead they’d simply lain in the darkened room, his arm around her. He’d waited for her breathing to fall into the gentle even rhythm of sleep, but it hadn’t come. Instead he’d heard her struggling against the tide of emotions that kept rising inside her, threatening to overwhelm her once again. “Did you take the pills Dr. Humphries gave you?” he asked.

  “One of them—I hate taking pills.”

  “Everybody hates taking pills. But sometimes they can actually help.” Gently easing his arm out from under her, Tony slid out of bed and went to the bathroom. A moment later he was back, holding a glass of water. “Where is it?” he asked.

  Sighing heavily, Caroline hitched herself up, turned on her bedside lamp, and found the pill. Gazing at it dolefully, she finally put it in her mouth and washed it down with the water Tony had brought her. She managed a wan smile as she handed the empty glass back to him. “If I have nightmares, this is going to cost you.”

  “I’ll risk it,” Tony replied. He took the glass back to the bathroom, and a moment later was beside her again, his arm once more protectively around her, her head once more snuggled into the hollow of his shoulder. He kissed her gently on the cheek, then reached over and switched off her light, plunging the room back into darkness.