He squeezed in behind them. “My God.”
“You know him?” she asked. Through the clinging thickness, the sheen of brown curls resembled bubbles in a pool of oil.
“Where’s the nearest hospital?” They secured him with bungee cords, one across his chest and the other around his legs. “Can you stop the bleeding on his head? Is there a blanket?” He tore off his coat and threw it over the pale form, then scrambled behind the wheel.
The tires whined, but the jeep didn’t move. He gunned it again, until it lunged forward. She steadied herself against the roll bar, and he jerked the steering wheel sharply, plowing through a fence. She gasped as they plunged down a steep embankment, bouncing onto a narrow street.
“That way! No! Go right! Just follow it out to the highway.”
He leaned forward, twisted the heat up as far as it would go. “He’s in shock. We’ve got to get him warm.”
“Straight ahead here.” She coughed, pain and cold seizing her chest. “Who is he? How did he get there?”
For a long moment, he didn’t answer, just concentrated on driving. “You know how he got there,” he said at last. Jerking at the wheel, he floored the gas pedal, and the jeep veered through highway slush.
“Look out!” They swerved into the far lane. “His pulse is so weak I can barely…”
No other lights moved. The engine droned, and the wipers squealed, and only a few thick flakes plunged straight down, heavy and wet. In a quiet monotone, she directed him to the medical center two towns away. “Oh my God,” she whispered. “It’s the Lonzo kid, isn’t it? You can barely see his face under all the blood. Dear God.” They seemed to crawl, yet the jeep slipped at every turn, the tires spinning with a sharp whir.
Wind whistled at the gaps in the windows, and the steering wheel fought him. “Like an animal burying its meat,” he muttered.
“Don’t.”
“You saw it.”
“Please.” They seemed to catch up with the retreating blizzard now, and their headlights glinted from the flurry, creating a heavy curtain that billowed around them. Windshield wipers left a curving trail of frost on the glass.
Icicles made the highway overpass look like some fanged maw. On the highway ahead, a behemoth growled, and the snowplow lumbered past them, the orbs of its headlights gleaming with malevolence.
XXI
The fluorescent glare reflected off wired glass; beyond the window lay blank fog. “But I thought you were going home today?” Steve tried to smile, his attention wandering uneasily around the room. “No?” Rapid tapping began at the hospital window, and suddenly raindrops the size of quarters splattered on the glass. “Well, you look a lot better than you did yesterday.”
“He sure does.” Kit stared at her leather boots, mottled with slush. “Got some color coming back and everything. I mean, that night in the jeep, I didn’t even recognize you. Oh, listen, here are the clothes you wanted. Steve, uh, I mean, Barry went and picked them up at your place. Was there anything else you needed?”
From the bed, Tully stared vacantly. A broad bandage hid his forehead. “I’m sorry,” he said at last, trembling. “I know you want me to remember.” Purplish bruises bloomed from his left temple to his jaw, accentuating both the pallor and the blotches beneath his eyes.
“It’s the concussion,” Kit began. “I’m sure in a few days…”
He shook his head—a barely perceptible motion—then grimaced. “A thing. That’s all I remember. The thing I always knew was there. When I was a little kid. In the closet. Under the bed.”
“How did you know?” Steve leaned forward.
“Steve, don’t.”
“You’re with the police now?” Tully looked him over with dull curiosity. “And you have a different name.” His face seemed dead flesh pulled taut. All his gawky charm had been stripped away, and his body seemed entirely composed of fragile points. “It picked me up. Like a doll.”
She edged closer, pressed his hand. “It’s all right.”
Slowly, painfully, he pulled his hand away. “It carried me.” His stare pivoted from her to the wet dimness beyond the window. “I fought.” The eyes alone seemed alive as they twitched with wild suffering. “I kicked, screamed.”
“Listen,” Steve began, “you don’t have to…” “I knew…what it wanted was worse than anything…any nightmare.” The noise in his chest might have been the ghost of a laugh. “I guess monsters are like that.” He held a bandaged hand over his face. “What do I do now?” A sob shook him. “Knowing it’s real? You tell me. How do I go on?”
Havoc unfurled in the sky. They stared through the glass walls of the hospital lobby, and Steve gave a bewildered grunt.
“Some storm.” Grimly, she shook her head. “It’s funny. He’s someone else I used to be friends with. But I haven’t seen him at all since I came back. Never called him. Nothing. He does seem a bit better, doesn’t he?” They watched rain beat the fog to the ground. “Don’t you think so?” Without turning, she examined the reflection of his face in the glimmering glass.
“They say he’s well enough to leave,” he told her, haltingly. “Doesn’t want to go…talks about signing himself into the psych ward.” He pushed at the door, and damp wind stirred his hair. “Might be the best thing.”
Fog still drifted low near the entrance.
“You don’t believe that,” she said, following him out. The snow had begun to melt, then freeze again: it was like walking on wet glass. As they slipped through the parking lot, rain settled heavily. Brittle tracings of snow still crusted the canvas roof of the jeep. “What do you think, should we put the top down?” The steam from her mouth mingled with the mist as she clambered in the passenger side. “That was a joke,” she explained. Behind them, the hospital entrance deliquesced into a smear of light, and the snow on the ground looked soaked and dangerous. “God, I’m freezing.”
“Yeah?” Droplets beaded his leather jacket. “It’s warmer than it’s been in weeks.” He revved the engine, then let it idle while the windshield defogged.
“That’s not saying much.” Turning one glove inside out, she wiped it across her window. “You sure you don’t mind driving?” She peered through the clear spot at the growing puddles. “My shoulder’s still bothering me a little.”
He clicked on the headlights, backed into a river of slush.
“You’re silent again.” She bit her lip, combed fingers through her damp hair. The box on the backseat held the new revolver she’d bought that morning, and an awareness of its presence obsessed her, seemed to fill the jeep. “We’re not doing too well, are we?” Billowing rain swept around them as the jeep pulled out, and the headlights sifted through alternating layers of vapor and water. “I mean, there’s been no sign of anyone at the apartment. No sign of them period.” Mist clung thickly to the ground and the splattering water mingled with it, but soon rain slashed down and broke it into drifting fragments that settled into the streams at the edge of the road. “Maybe it’s time we call the authorities, don’t you think?” she asked. “Maybe it’s time. He could get away if we don’t. Couldn’t he?”
“It.”
“What?”
“It could. Get away.”
The jeep swayed slowly, and water sheeted up behind them. As the engine thrummed, she fancied they were falling, plummeting back to Edgeharbor. Usually, she expected some sense of release whenever she left the town limits behind her, but today she’d experienced no lightening of tension, and it occurred to her that perhaps such respite no longer existed for her. Tires crunched over a crust of ice in the dirt-scaled snow. Patches of rubber from the tires of some passing eighteen-wheeler littered the road like the fallen scales of a dinosaur.
Ahead of them, other tires had rutted the wet snow, but gray ice already filled the curving furrows, making their slow progress even more arduous. Isolated objects stood out in the haze. A boulder. A call box. Then a bank of trees pressed close, coalescing into a single mass. A minivan growled by, and
gouts of slush hit their salt-streaked windshield. Cursing, Steve braked as the roads merged. They waited for an opening, listening to the slush-clogged sounds of traffic. It would have been a natural moment for him to look at her.
Particles of ice clotted on the windshield, and he stared through them at smudges of light, swirls of motion. Finally, they shot forward. “Turn here,” she said.
“I see it.” Melting snow clogged the old highway, and mottled water lashed up at the windows. Suddenly, the rain sluiced down in blinding sheets, and the windshield wipers splashed ineffectually. “Going to have to pull over.”
Water hissed up from the tires. An expanse of gray spread onto a field, submerging the rest area. This pool bled into an ocean that seemed to roll from the surrounding pines, smeared with green and carrying a primeval scent of moss and mud and twisted roots. “Christ.” They passed other cars on the shoulder, and he chose a spot, braked. The leaden swirl soaked rapidly through snow at the side of the road, until beer cans and other debris bloomed. Slush hung heavily in the nearer trees, meshed in the webbing of needles, bowing the branches, a diamond casing of ice on the boughs. The windshield wipers slapped loudly, and the interior of the vehicle began to seem like a small cave.
“Have you ever seen fog on the beach?” she asked him softly. “It looks like the end of the world. Especially at night. You can’t tell where the land ends and the sea begins.”
After a time, the downpour slowed to a drizzle, and a car passed, then another. Without speaking, he started the jeep.
She bit her lip. “When we get back to town…” The jeep surged to one side. “If we get back to town…”
“No cracks about my driving.” Finally, his glance veered to her, and he tried to smile. “You’re going to tell the authorities finally, right? You’ve been threatening to all day. Go ahead, if you feel you need to. But do you really think it’s such a good idea?”
“I’ve seen it now.” The glittering curve of their headlights preceded them along the road. “Whatever it is. It’s not a game anymore.”
“Nobody was ever playing games, Kit.” He turned to her, fully taking in her appearance: the soaked ringlets, clinging to her skull like a cap, the tense intelligence of her eyes. “Nobody.” He returned his full attention to the road. “Besides, I thought you’d decided it was just some guy in a mask?” A casino bus swerved at them, spraying water on all sides, and she gasped as he jerked the wheel. “Try to relax,” he said.
“Just shut up and drive.” The tires hummed wetly over the asphalt. “So this is what it feels like to want something again,” she said. “All right. I want something. I want to hope for something and work for something, and I hadn’t even realized I’d let go of all that. Until I met you.”
Rain shuddered on the roof.
“Steve, please? We need to talk.” Suddenly, she couldn’t look at him. Rivulets snaked across the glass, and she forced herself to watch the drowned forest. “I hate this.” Pines sagged, bunching together against the freezing drizzle, the thinner branches vibrating until the trees seemed to shiver, the whole forest twitching. Moments later, the woods thinned, and the first drab buildings rose. “What are we going to do?”
The slick road ranged into town without apparent strategy. Sometimes it swerved to avoid rocky outcroppings; sometimes it plowed straight through boulders that reared like ancient sentinels. From the first steep rise, she glimpsed the gray hump of the sea; then the streets of Edgeharbor engulfed them. The road climbed so that they seemed to be level with the upper stories of the houses they passed, and the windows of those houses reflected the stony havoc of the sky. “Steve, I’m scared.” The clouds looked solid, mountainous, like the contours of some frost-covered shore they had no hope of reaching. “I’ve never been so scared. I think something awful is about to happen, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.”
“You could have been killed.” He spoke with considered finality, turning onto the road to the marina.
“Steve…”
“No more.” The jeep slowed. All around them, gulls screamed and wheeled, their bodies the color of the winter sky. They settled on rooftops and posts, until shrieking in outrage, they simply raised their wings to the wind and lifted again.
He pulled into the carport, close beside the Volkswagen, and they hurried to the stairs through a chilling veil of drizzle. A sudden gust slapped hard at her, and she clutched the rail as he caught her about the waist. For an instant, she turned toward the sea. “Jesus.”
Foam rolled across the edge of the dock.
Above them at the kitchen windows, the cat stared through wavering glass.
XXII
“I can’t get an answer at Charlotte’s. I’m worried. Storms always hit worse on that side of the inlet.” She hung up but kept her hand on the phone. “The lines could be out in places, I suppose. And she never picks up after she’s gone to bed.”
He could see how nervous she was becoming. Sitting stiffly on the sofa, he cradled his head in his hands.
Twice the lights flickered, until finally she lit candles. The effect was hardly romantic, actually seeming to accentuate the shabby, claustrophobic aspects of the duplex. Eventually, she threw together a meal, but neither of them really touched it, and though she tried repeatedly to begin a conversation, he couldn’t seem to bring himself to respond. After dinner, he sank back on the sofa, still silent.
Outside, rain billowed at the windows with a sound like cracking glass. A moment later, he kicked off his shoes and shifted a cushion. He saw her turn away quickly when she realized that he meant to sleep right there.
She left the room.
After a moment, he heaved himself up and followed. She had her back to him. Perched on the kitchen windowsill, the cat tentatively allowed the stroke of her fingertips. Rivulets snaked across the glass, and wind struck again. With an explosive hiss, the cat backed across the sideboard, knocking over a ceramic vase. “It’s okay, cat. Don’t be afraid. Just a little storm.” Stooping, she began to gather the shards of the vase. “Hell, that was my mother’s.”
“You need help?”
She whirled around, not having heard him enter the room. Before she could respond, the ringing of the phone made her jump. “Could you grab that?” She dropped the fragments. “It might be Charlotte.”
He’d already picked up the receiver.
“Who is it?” she asked. “Steve? Is it…?”
He turned away, cradling the phone. “It’s for me,” he answered in a flat voice.
“Oh.” She dropped the pieces into a wicker wastepaper basket. “Who knows you’re here?”
“Yes,” he muttered into the phone, pacing back into the living room, as far from her as the cord would allow. At first, all he heard was a dissonant hum; then the voice on the phone reached his brain like the twitch of a nerve.
“Shall we not play games? Good. You know who I am,” the voice grated. “Is your little policewoman in the room? Simply say ‘yes’ again in a normal tone.”
He pushed the phone so hard into his ear that it ached like an old wound. “Yes.”
“Well done. You’ll want to memorize this address. Six thirteen Decatur. Fourth floor rear. I assume you do understand why I’m contacting you. Am I correct in this assumption? Yes? He’ll move soon now. He’s been searching for a new place for days.” The words broke apart on a raking cough. “Just remember—leave the girl alone! Can you comprehend that instruction?”
“Yes.”
“Pardon me if I get personal for a moment, but I’ve been observing you for quite some time now. You seem, if you don’t mind my saying so, passionately involved in your pursuit. Is that correct? What precisely is your stake in all this? Did the boy take the life of someone you loved? Not that I object to such a motive, you understand. This merely represents, shall we say, academic curiosity on my part.”
A dead voice issued from his throat. “Something like that.”
“I thought as much. How virtuous of you.
Virtuous in the old sense—an eye for an eye and all that. Moralizing, however, is hardly my line, and—as I said—it scarcely matters so long as you take his life.”
Even after the line went dead, he kept the receiver pressed to his ear, as though seeking somehow to gain control of it. “Monsters,” he whispered.
“What did you say? Steve?”
He kept looking at the phone as though expecting the instrument itself to reveal some secret. Finally, he returned to the kitchen and hung up, then stood staring out at the teeming rain. A moment later, she followed him in.
“Who was that?”
He watched her reflection in the window, saw the imploring way she stared at his back, the way the palm of her hand wiped invisible dust from the tabletop. “It has to end,” he said at last.
Outside, the storm wailed, and an atmosphere of leaden exhaustion seemed to fill the apartment. She cleared away the dishes, and he wandered back into the parlor. Later, she brought him a blanket, but neither of them spoke as she retired to the bedroom and closed the door.
He lay on the sofa and listened to the wind. The rain droned, and he could hear the cat padding around the kitchen. He would have no choice now. He knew it, and the thought filled him with dread. Very soon, he would have to kill.
“You’re not going to tell me, are you?”
“Tell you what?”
Kit wrestled with the steering wheel. “What’s different? What’s changed you?”
“Nothing’s different.” Rain sloshed at the vinyl windows.
“Right,” she said through clenched teeth.
“So dark.” With a sharp movement, he turned to face her, and she almost flinched. “More like ten at night than ten in the morning.”
She sighed. “Are you going to stake out the apartment tonight?”
“Look at it come down.” He stared at the rain again.
“Steve?”
“Like it’s never going to stop.”
The Shore Page 20
