“Are you feeling okay?” he asked. Joey nodded, but kept his eyes on the television. Jack glanced up and saw Bugs Bunny. He looked back and asked, "How's your head?"
"Better," Joey said.
"Good. Has Liz said when you get to go home?"
"I don't know," Joey said. His eyes stayed on the television, but his head turned slightly toward Jack, as if he would look at him if his eyes hadn't been drawn inexorably to the screen. "I haven't seen her since last night."
"What?" Jack said. "Where's she been?"
"I dunno," Joey said, shrugging his shoulders. "She gave me a shower and then I came to bed. She was gone when I woke up."
"You don't know where she is?"
Joey shook his head. Jack kissed his forehead and said, "I'll be back. If a nurse or someone comes in, ask them when you can go home. I'm going to see if I can find your stepmother."
Joey didn't respond and Jack closed the door behind him.
What in the hell did she think she was doing leaving him alone like that? And where the fuck did she go?
For the first time in their marriage, a voice of doubt spoke up.
She's alone all day, it said. Who's to say what she does at home? Maybe she's seeing someone else. Maybe that's where she is.
Shut up, Jack told the voice. That's ridiculous. She's not seeing someone else.
How do you know?
Because I do.
That sounds logical.
Shut up.
He stopped at the nurses’ station and asked, "Has anyone seen my wife? We brought my son in? Joseph Kitch? I had to go to work and my wife, Liz, was supposed to be staying with him. But I can't find her."
The nurses hadn't seen her.
Angel County Hospital had a huge glass birdcage set off from one of the waiting rooms. Jack looked there, but didn't find Liz. He found a pay phone and called the house in case she'd, for whatever reason, called a cab and gone home some time after he left this morning. No one answered. He looked in the gift shop. He checked the chapel. He checked the cafeteria. There was Liz sitting alone in a booth along the wall, sipping coffee and smoking a cigarette. Jack slid into the seat across from her.
"When did you start smoking?"
"When I was fourteen," Liz said.
"Hmm. I seem to have missed that the past couple years."
"I quit a week or so after Alex left."
"A test of willpower?"
"Something like that."
"Where've you been?"
"Pretty much right here," she said.
"Pretty much?"
She puffed, inhaled, and sighed smoke out the side of her mouth. She rubbed a red eye and said, "Well, you know, I wandered around the hospital for a while. After a while I think I started scaring the nurses--they were looking at me pretty weird--so I came down here. Been here since late last night."
Jack sat silent for a minute, biting the inside of his lip.
"Want to tell me why?"
Liz had apparently been slipping into a daze; when Jack spoke, she had to focus on him and ask, "Huh?"
"Want to tell me why you left Joey by himself in the middle of the hospital and went off to roam the halls?"
"I don't know," she said.
"What do you mean you don't know?"
"I mean, I don't know if I want to tell you. You aren’t gonna believe me, so why waste the time?"
Jack looked at his watch.
"Time is one thing I don't have a lot of, Liz. I'm supposed to be back at work in about five minutes, so spill it. What's wrong with you?"
Liz tried a laugh and looked down at the table.
"There's nothing wrong with me," she said. "You want to find out what's wrong, go to the house and try the third floor. Whole bunch of stuff wrong up there."
Jack got a hot flash as last night came back to him. He'd spent the day trying to shove it away and convince himself he'd dreamed it, a nightmare brought on by stress from Joey's fall and Liz's insane insistence of ghosts. He'd almost convinced himself, except for the small nag at the back of his skull.
"There's nothing wrong with the house," he said. His voice cracked on "house". He cleared his throat and hoped Liz didn't call him on it. One look at her told him she was only half-listening anyway. "And I'm sure nothing from the house had anything to do with you walking the halls here."
"No, why would it?" Liz said.
Jack looked at his watch again. He was late. Leaving now wouldn't matter, he wasn't going to make it back on time. I'm on salary anyway, he thought. If the engineers can take an hour lunch at least twice a week, I can once in a month.
He rubbed his eyes and said, "Just tell me why the hell you left Joey alone all night when all you had to do was sit with him. You could have slept, you could have stayed up watching television, you could have got a book from the gift shop, I don't care what you did as long as you did it with Joey there. So why did you leave him all night?"
Liz crushed out her cigarette and took two more sips from her coffee before she set the cup aside and asked, "What color are Joey's eyes?"
"I take it that has something to do with this?"
"What color are they?"
Jack thought for a second before saying, "Brown."
"Not anymore."
He raised his eyebrows, squinted his eyes, a Huh? gesture. "And now they're . . . ?"
"They're green. Well, pretty much. There's still some brown in them, but they're almost all green now. I noticed it last night, but it was after working all day upstairs and I wasn't sure if I was just tired and confused or if his eyes had really changed color."
“His mother had green eyes. They've probably been a mix forever. Lots of peoples’ eyes are a mix of colors."
Liz sighed.
"I knew you were going to have some kind of explanation. I told you it was a waste of time."
"I just want to know what this has to do with why you were so irresponsible?" Jack said. "If I'd known you were going to go off and leave him alone, I'd have stayed and watched him myself. You know, just because he's not your son doesn't mean--"
Liz cut him off with, "Don't you ever say anything like that again. Who's the one who stays home with him every single day? Who's the one who feeds him, bathes him, talks to him? It sure as hell isn't you. I'm more parent to that boy than you've been since we moved here."
"Sorry for being the one to have a job," he said. "But that house isn't going to pay for itself."
"Fuck that house," she replied. "That house can burn down for all I care. What I'm trying to tell you through your stupid fucking logic-haze is that Joey's brown eyes are now green. His blonde hair is now red--in case you hadn't noticed--and last night after his shower, while I was drying him off, I saw the boy--your six-year-old son--has pubic hair. Not a lot, but a dozen is more than any six-year-old should have."
Jack had turned away from her, trying not to hear because none of it made any logical sense and as soon as she shut up, he'd be able to think and figure out what she was talking about and at least two good ways to explain it.
"Now, I may not be the electronics genius you are," she said, "but I know enough to see things that are going on right in front of me and not dismiss it because I can't explain it. I'm telling you what's going on and I'm telling you that fucking house has something to do with it. I want you to tell me everything you know about what went on up there."
Jack shrugged. "I don't know anything," he said. "A guy killed his kids, then himself. That's it."
"When?"
"I don't know," he said. "Few years ago, maybe. Five, six, I don't know. I wasn't here, I was in Houston, remember?"
"There's got to be more there," Liz said. She pulled a half-empty cigarette pack from the seat beside her, shook one out, stuck it in her mouth and lit it with a match from the book tucked into the pack. She puffed, blew smoke. Sighed. Watched an old woman in blue scrubs buy a carton of milk and a salad.
Jack put his hand on her wrist and she snapped back to look at h
im.
"I want you to tell me what the hell's wrong with you," he said.
She looked at him and he could see she wanted to say something, but she decided she didn't have the words she needed and she looked down at the table instead.
"I don't know," she finally whispered. "I don't even know. Everything's so fucking crazy. I got stuff at the house, voices and shadows and people killing their children upstairs. Then Joey's different and you're you and that ain't helping a bit and--"
"Thanks," Jack said.
"I'm sorry. You know me, Jack. You know I'm not crazy--"
"I never said you were."
"No, but you look at me like I am. When I tell you what I've seen and heard in that house, you look at me like I just said the invasion forces had landed from space. I'm not talking about anything that hasn't been documented a thousand times over already, but you just won't listen and you don't see any of it. I don't know, maybe because they know you don't believe in it and that when I say there's ghosts you'll think I'm insane."
Jack leaned over the table and kissed her forehead.
"I don't think you're insane," he said. "I think we just need to get Joey and you and me home and we'll figure something out from there, okay?"
She kept her eyes on the table. She stubbed out the half-smoked cigarette and let herself be pulled up as Jack led her back to Joey's room.
She stayed in the room with him while Jack went to see about getting him signed out. She kept her back to the wall by the door and didn't look at Joey. He lay in the bed watching television, neither speaking nor looking her way.
The ten minutes Jack was gone seemed like an hour and Liz stood there, dreading a word from Joey because she was suddenly sure the voice that came out wouldn't be his and that would be one more thing in the long list that Jack would choose not to see. She wished sometimes she could just punch Jack in the face, just once, just hard enough to open his eyes to the possibility that not everything in the world fell into his stupid, narrow-minded classifications.
Jack came back. "They said they could let him go just as soon as the doctor releases him."
"How long?"
"They're trying to get hold of him now." Jack used the phone to call work. He told Bill Sten where he was and that he'd be back just as soon as he could.
The doctor came in ninety minutes later to look Joey up and down, then said he was good to go and once the paperwork was done, Joey was wheeled to the front door where Jack had the car waiting.
The ride home was quiet and once they reached the house neither Liz nor Joey was eager to get inside. Liz kept her eyes on the third floor windows as she shuffled to the door. Joey kept his eyes down. No one spoke.
Soon after, Jack went back to work. He said he might be a little late in case anything had come up with Aurora while he was gone. He kissed his wife and son, and went out the back door. As soon as the door clicked shut, Liz heard the bathroom door close down the hall.
She suppressed a shudder and sighed.
Joey sat on the couch watching cartoons. Liz knelt next to him and said, "Joey, I want you to tell me if you know what's going on."
Joey stayed focused, but his mouth opened as if he were going to talk.
"I'm sorry I left you alone last night," she said.
"That's okay," Joey said. She wanted to hug him when she recognized the voice as the Joey she'd known the past two years. "You were just scared."
"Yeah," she said. "I guess I was. I'm sorry. Do you know what's happening?"
He shook his head, but didn't say anything. Then he looked at her and asked, "Do you?"
"No," she said. "I don't."
"Something bad?"
"I don't know."
"Bad stuff happens here a lot," he said.
"Does it?"
"Uh-huh. People get hurt here. Are we going to get hurt?"
"No," she said, even though the best she could come to certainty was a strong hope that everything might be okay.
She left Joey where he was and crossed to the bedroom, keeping the corner of her eye on the hall, hoping to God nothing was coming down the stairs toward her. In the bedroom, she thrust her hand under Jack's side of the mattress, searching, finding the book she knew was there, and pulling it out.
Jack knew something, she knew he did, but he wouldn't tell her. That's okay, she thought he might have gotten it from this book, and if he did, she'd find out what he knew.
She thumbed through it, glancing at the chapter headings, then flipped to the front for a look at the table of contents.
There were three chapters on ghosts, and two were haunted house stories.
Liz turned the book over for another look at the cover, then looked at the back, checking to see if there was any word about how true the stories in here were. The front cover had a banner pasted across the bottom: "TRUE STORIES OF ANGEL HILL ODDITIES". She flipped back to the contents and picked one of the haunted house stories.
She turned to the chapter then scanned down the page. This wasn't her house. This house was in west Angel Hill and was supposedly built on the site of a Civil War battle. Not what she was looking for.
She turned to the other haunted house chapter and read.
It told pretty much the same story Charley Clark had given Jack. Milo Dengler's wife dead from cancer. Four kids. Dengler signs off from work one day and a few days later the police show up. The book didn't say how the police came to be at the Dengler door, but it did tell what they found. Milo Dengler hanging from the rail at the top of the third floor and his three sons and a daughter dead in the corner bedroom.
Liz shuddered, closed the book with her finger between the pages, then turned around, sure there was someone behind her.
Joey was still in the living room. From the bed, she could see Naruto on television.
She turned back to the book, flipping through the pages again, hoping for pictures or names or anything else. She didn't know much more now than she did before. Except that she'd been right when she first wondered if someone had died up there. She would never have guessed it would be so bad, though.
To kill, not only yourself, but also your four kids. She couldn't imagine there was any reasoning behind that good enough to make it even the germ of an idea in anyone's head. But she wasn't him, she told herself, and she didn't know anything more about him than what this book said. For all she knew, the book itself was so much conjecture. Who knew how much truth there was in its pages? But there was a nudge at the back of her skull that said it was true. No matter the motive behind it, this was what had happened.
The book offered nothing more than the story and she closed it, then slid it back under Jack's side of the mattress.
In the hall, she peeked in on Joey who was still sitting quietly, watching cartoons. At the stairs, she saw the bathroom door standing open now and wondered when that had happened. She knew she heard it close when Jack left. As she stood staring at it, the light clicked on, shocking her into action and she quickly went up the first flight of stairs.
At the door, she looked out, saw the mail hadn't come yet--but who was this? Someone was coming up the front walk. Liz stared at her for a second before she recognized her. The woman from the park, the one who lived up the street. What was her name? Liz didn’t think she’d ever asked for it.
The woman came up the porch, but before she could knock, Liz opened the door. The woman was startled for a second, but then she saw Liz and smiled.
“Hi,” she said. “I’m sorry to barge in, but I saw the ambulance last night and just wanted to make sure everything was alright down here. Do you need anything?”
Liz wondered how much of this was genuine concern and how much was nosy neighbor.
“No,” she said. “Everything’s fine down here. We just had an accident with my son, but he’s okay.”
“Oh, I see. Well, you want to be careful with kids in a big house like this,” she said. “There’s got to be lots of opportunities for them to hurt themselves.”
>
“Yeah, well . . . ” Liz said, then trailed off. She stood for a second, wondering how to proceed, then a thought occurred and she said, “Hey, can I ask you something?”
“Oh, sure,” the woman said.
“You’ve lived here, you said, what, ten years? Did you know the people who lived here before? The Denglers?”
“Oh,” the woman said. “What a sad story that was, huh? It makes you wonder why they let people like that be parents.”
Liz didn’t know about all that. From the way the book told the story, it was just one bad thing after another, but up until that point it seemed the Denglers had been a pretty solid family.
“Yeah,” Liz said. “I heard about what happened, but I was just wondering if you might know anything about them before all that? I’m curious to know what kind of people they were?”
“They were fine people,” the woman said, “until that happened.”
“Well, was there--I’m sorry, we’re out here on the porch in the heat. Please, come inside.”
“Thank you.”
Liz led her up to the second floor and gave her a seat.
“You know,” she said, “I don’t think I ever got your name in the park that day.”
“I’m Judy,” the woman said, and held out her hand.
“Liz,” she said, and offered her own hand.
“Yes, they were good people,” Judy started. “At least, I always thought so. I was only beginning to know them when she got sick, but I very much enjoyed their company when I came down here. I didn’t know the husband too well, but his wife, and the children, wonderful people. It was a shame and a waste, to lose someone like that.”
“Cancer, wasn’t it?” Liz asked.
“Yeah. Took her way too fast.”
“Tell me about the children.”
“You want to talk about a tragedy,” Judy said. “What he did to those children, that’s a crime against the world. They were the brightest, warmest children you’ve ever met. The oldest, Adam, he was always the man of the house, what with their father out on the trains all the time. I used to come visit after she got sick, to check in on her, you know, and Adam was always taking care of the younger ones. Getting their lunch, making sure they had clean clothes, all that. He was so grown up for such a young boy.”
The Third Floor Page 19
