Her back was to me when I told her about meeting Marci in the bar, but she didn’t seem to react. Not the way she did when I told her about spending two days in the Hunter Barlow library and about everything I had found there, tightening her grip around the rail of David’s bed.
She leaned over David’s bed for the last part of the story, about Marci that last night, about meeting her back in my room, about her drugging me and stealing the book. I couldn’t face her as I told her about that, staring holes into the coffee table instead.
She kept her silence for the longest time, and when I finally looked up she was staring at me, her face hard, impassive. “Is that it?” she asked, her voice cold.
“Yes,” I said quietly. “That’s everything that happened.”
“No,” she said, standing partway behind the chair, her hand on its back. “I mean, is that it? Are you done with that goddamn book?”
“I knew I shouldn’t have said anything. I knew you wouldn’t understand.”
“Chris, I understand,” she said. “Something terrible has happened, and it’s easier for you to disappear into some”—she looked for the right word—“fairy tale, rather than facing up to the reality that’s around you. I understand that. I’d like to lose myself in a fairy tale, too, but I don’t have the luxury of a trip to New York to indulge myself. I was here, looking after our son, while you were spending your days in an old library and picking up women in bars.”
“I didn’t—”
“And you know what’s almost as crazy as you and this damn book? It’s the fact that I don’t care that you picked up some strange woman. Fine. More power to you.” Something in her tone, though, didn’t ring true. “But this, all this nonsense about the book, and magic, it’s got to stop. It’s got to stop now.” Her expression was livid, and she couldn’t even look at me now, staring instead out the window behind me.
“The book’s gone,” I said weakly.
“Thank God for that,” she said. “Now maybe things can go back to normal around here.”
“No,” I almost shouted. She looked up at me sharply, as if unable to believe that the word had come out of my mouth. “We can’t ‘get back to normal.’ ” I gestured at David, who hadn’t even flinched as our voices were raised around him. “Does he seem ‘normal’ to you?”
“At least he’s real,” she spat back, her eyes burning.
“You’ve seen it, though. You know that reading to him from that book soothes him, keeps him from having seizures.”
“There are countless possible explanations for that. Maybe he’s comforted by hearing the last story he was reading. Maybe he does hear it, but he can’t express that to us. Maybe—”
“Countless lousy explanations,” I said, my voice falling, “and you won’t even consider the possibility that I’m right. You won’t even consider what I’ve found. About Pilbream. About that little boy in Seattle. Doesn’t that—?”
“I have to live in the real world, Chris. Someone has to be here, taking care of our son, while you go off on these tangents. Someone has to be here, Chris. And whether you’re in New York or upstairs, you’re just not.”
David stepped through the doorway. The room was no bigger than his living room at home, the walls black where the explosion had charred the slime. The heat from the flames at the centre of the floor was almost unbearable.
We’re going to have to figure it out pretty quick, before this place turns into an oven.
“Yeah.”
He looked around the room, peering into the corners, trying to find anyplace the Stone might have been hidden.
You know where it is.
David looked at the burning symbol in the middle of the room, reluctant to accept what he knew to be true. The Sunstone had to be there, hidden in the flames somewhere.
“So do you think we should just wait?” he asked. “It can’t burn forever, right?”
It can if this chamber is built on some sort of underground deposit, Matt said. There’s no other fuel for the flames.
Matt was right: there was no wood or anything in the symbols carved into the floor. The flames seemed to be dancing in the air. Like the gas fireplace in their living room back home. “Yeah,” he said. “That’s exactly the sort of thing Gafilair would do. Have me start a fire that I can’t put out, that I have to get through to get the Sunstone. Which,” he added, for Matt’s benefit, “we all know that I’m destined to get.” As he spoke the words, that niggling thought came back, that sense that there was something wrong with the reasoning.
Right.
“So all we have to do is use what we have.” He took another look around the chamber for something to put out the flames.
Exactly.
“Except—” The room was completely empty. No hidden nooks, no shadowy corners. No handprints on the walls. And the flames were getting higher. “We don’t have anything.”
There has to be a way for you to get the Stone, Matt said, his voice growing desperate as the temperature rose.
And then something clicked within David. He’d been looking at the question all wrong, trying to figure out how to extinguish the flames. Putting out the fire wasn’t the issue—the main thing was to get the Stone.
Where are you going? Matt called as David stumbled toward the doorway to the antechamber, pulling the strap of the bag over his head as he went.
Outside the door it was cooler, but only slightly. David fell to his knees and fumbled with the buckle of the bag, frantically searching through its contents. The map. The canister. The Stone. There!
He pulled out the small bag that had been in the canister, remembering the cool, numbing feel of the red sand as he had rubbed it between his thumb and forefinger.
“You might be right,” he muttered, pulling at the tie. “About me having everything that I need.”
He tugged at the leather thong, which had been knotted and wasn’t coming loose. The knife that Loren had given him cut through the leather with ease.
Careful not to spill any, he poured a small amount of the red sand into the palm of his hand. The moment it touched bare skin, David could feel the cold, like a cough candy in his mouth. It wasn’t sand, though. More like a powdery clay that dissolved in the sweat of his palm, producing a scarlet, sticky mud.
Without hesitating, David began to rub the mud into his face, slathering it on thick. The shock of the cold took his breath away, but he kept rubbing, adding more of the clay to his hands when they started to get dry.
Make sure you get your neck, Matt advised. And your ears. And right around your eyes.
“This had better work,” he said, spreading the mud, shivering.
It will, Matt said. It has to.
There it was again, that sense that there was something wrong with Matt’s theory. David pushed the thought out of his mind. One thing at a time.
Any exposed skin … Matt urged.
David frantically smeared the mud over his forearms, up to his sleeves, then around his fingers and thumbs, adding more mud until he was coated.
He tried shaking the bag out over his palm again, but nothing came out.
“I hope there was enough,” he said, dropping the leather bag on the floor as he stood up.
Don’t waste any time, Matt advised. We don’t know how long that mud will protect you.
The fire had risen almost to the ceiling, a roaring white-orange jet of light and heat. The air felt like it was singeing his legs and chest, his throat, his lungs; anywhere that the mud covered felt cool.
“So far so good.”
He fought against ebbing waves of heat to cross the room, stepping high over the band of flames that formed the outer ring of the Sunstone symbol.
Within the ring of fire, the heat was making it nearly impossible to breathe. Smoke started to curl off his clothes.
It’s not smoke, Matt said. It’s steam. It’s your sweat, evaporating.
The heat was sapping what little strength he had left.
I don�
��t know how much longer I can stay in here, he thought to Matt, keeping his mouth tightly closed.
You’re almost there.
David dropped to his knees in front of the pillar of flame. It made a roaring noise, like a plane taking off. He could feel a hot sizzling around his head as his hair started to singe.
His eyes stung as he peered into the base of the flame. He forced himself not to close them; he had to be sure …
Yes! There it was! Another silver disk, another red stone, slightly higher than the level of the floor, plainly visible just under the bottom edge of the flame.
It should be cooler there, Matt said. It takes the right mix of oxygen to burn, so the gas is too concentrated under there to burn …
Matt, David said inside his head. I think I figured it out.
David, just get the Stone.
That’s the thing, he thought, and even thinking the words was almost too much for him. About your theory. About the happy ending. About me having to get the Stone.
David, you don’t have much time.
His hand was shaking as he reached toward the clear space, just over the silver disk.
See, I think maybe you’re wrong. About it being … about it being inevitable … that there’s a happy ending.
His next breath felt like a jet of flame to his lungs.
David …
He lowered his hand, almost touching the silver. Because the last time I did this, I died.
I sat at my desk for a long time with my eyes closed, trying in vain to undo the last hour. I shouldn’t have said anything more about the book.
Mea culpa. Again.
I picked up my notebook, bulging from use, then threw it back down on the desk without opening it.
Carol Corvin’s e-mail was open on my laptop when I booted up; I looked at it blankly for a moment, and I felt something shift within me.
This wasn’t about me and my failings: this was about David, about making him whole again, about doing anything in my power to save my son. Whatever it cost me.
Carol Corvin was the founder and chair of a foundation responsible for millions of dollars in research into childhood brain injuries every year. She’d been living with a child in David’s condition for almost thirty years. She was certainly someone I should talk to.
I picked up my notebook and wrote down her name and phone number. Then I flipped back through the pages until I got to Tony Markus’s contact information. I dialled his direct number.
Voice mail again. I took a deep breath and said, “This is for David” out loud as his outgoing message played.
“Tony, it’s Chris Knox calling. I’ve left a couple of messages but I haven’t heard back from you. I know that you’ve got the book. I know you’ve got it, and I don’t really care—you’re welcome to it. Davis & Keelor can do what it wants with the book—I’ve got no claim on it. I just—I really need to talk to you. This is going to sound crazy, but I think the book has done something to my son, and I need to see it, to borrow it for a couple of days to see, to see if I can undo it. Like I said, I know that sounds crazy, but if you could just call me, please, I can explain.”
I left my number and hung up the phone. I’d probably never hear from him, but maybe coming clean would work. I had nothing more to lose. If I could just talk to him …
I dialled the next number down the list.
“Good afternoon, Davis & Keelor, how may I direct your call?”
“Can I speak to Tony Markus, please?”
“I’m sorry. Mr. Markus is out of the office today.”
“Is there any way to get hold of him? My name is Christopher Knox and I’m working on a project with him.”
“I can put you through to a department assistant, Mr. Knox,” she said. “One moment.”
I waited as the line went quiet, then gave my explanation again to the chipper-voiced woman who picked up.
“I’ve already left him a couple of voice mails,” I continued.
“I don’t have any way to reach him except for his cell phone or e-mail,” she said.
“It’s very important.”
“I’m sorry, sir, he’s—”
“Can you tell me when he’ll be back?”
She named a date, a Monday, a week-and-a-half away.
“That’s too long,” I said. “I really need to get hold of him.”
“I’m sure he’ll call you as soon as he has a chance. Would you like me to connect you to his voice mail here?” Genuinely trying to be helpful. “He said he would be checking it while he was in Oregon.” She pronounced the second o heavily, the way people from the East Coast always did.
“No, thank you,” I stammered. “I’ll keep trying him on his cell.” I hung up as quickly as I could.
Oregon. He was going to meet with Cat, and bring her the book as a show of good faith, an unexpected gift to sweeten the deal.
Oregon.
Portland was only a ferry trip and a few hours away.
David braced himself as he reached under the tower of flame, squinting against the roar and heat. He half expected to watch his hand sizzle, expected to hear himself screaming.
Almost there.
David could barely breathe as he watched his fingers, coated in red mud, reach toward the silver disk, remembering last time what had come next—
That didn’t happen to you, Matt said. That happened to Dafyd.
With one final stretch he touched the top of the Stone. He closed his eyes completely, waiting for the crackle of energy, the sharp punch to the chest.
But none of that happened.
Instead, under the pressure of his hand, the Stone descended almost an inch, settling with a resounding thunk. All flames in the room guttered and died. The air was cooler instantly.
He drew a full breath for what felt like the first time in an eternity, and smiled.
You see? Matt said.
“See what?” David asked, revelling in the fact that he was still alive.
It wasn’t a trap.
“Right,” David said, not sure where the other boy was going with this.
No one else has made it this far. Everything has changed.
“It’s a book,” David said. “How can everything change?”
That’s what I’m trying to tell you. Yes, we’re in the world that Lazarus created, but you’re not one of his characters. He doesn’t control you. And that changes everything.
“I’m not so sure.”
Think about it. What book for an eleven-year-old boy would have the heroes butchering a group of people in their sleep? If this was a typical book, you and Captain Bream would be bonding. He’d be showing you how to use a sword. Hell, it would probably turn out that he was Dafyd’s father.
“But because I’m here, everything is different.”
Exactly.
“So I could just walk away,” David said, considering the possibility. “I could sneak away in the middle of the night, keep away from all this.” He looked around the room, his gaze returning to the Stone, now almost level with the chamber floor. “Forget that I even heard of the Sunstone …”
But … Matt said slowly.
“But if I ever want to see my family again, I have to get through to the end. I have to get the Sunstone.” His heart sank.
And even then …
“I know,” he said sadly. “It’s only a guess.”
Right.
Shifting carefully, he leaned over to take a closer look at the Stone and its silver disk. They were almost identical to the ones he had found in the canyon.
David touched it carefully with his fingertip to see if it would move; it didn’t.
“I’m guessing I have to unscrew it,” he said, bending close to look. Yes. There was a narrow groove around the edges of the disk, just big enough for his fingertips.
Be careful, Matt said. Last time we nearly drowned.
“I know,” he said, reaching down to grip the edges of the disk. “But it’s not like I have any choice.�
�
At least he’s consistent, Matt muttered. Gafilair. Lazarus Took. Whichever.
David twisted the disk, trying to force it to the left. When it finally gave, a hissing noise filled the air.
“Oh shit,” he said.
It’s gas, Matt said. When you pushed the Stone down it must have sealed it off. And now you broke the seal.
David unscrewed the disk as quickly as he could. He could feel the gas as it rushed past his hand, his face.
It’s not just here. It’s all around the room.
Hisses echoed around the chamber, as if the cave were suddenly filled with dozens of snakes.
Hurry, Matt urged as David twisted the canister around and around. It was taking too long.
The air was growing thick, and David was beginning to get dizzy.
He took a chance and stopped unscrewing, pulling instead.
“Got it!” he said as he yanked the silver canister out of the floor. There was a hint of resistance—
David!
—and a rasping noise as the last inch of the cylinder came free from the floor. David knew the sound immediately, had heard it dozens of times in his life—the rasp of flint against metal, the thick sound of a spark, like from his father’s Zippo lighter—
The more I thought about it, the more sense it made. I would drive down to Oregon, maybe stopping to “interview” Carol Corvin on the way, and arrange to meet with Cat. I wouldn’t tell her why I wanted to talk to her, but by the time I got there she would probably have met with Tony, so she would have some idea.
And I’d beg.
I looked at David in front of the television, his shapeless posture, his jerky hands. Jacqui had gone out, making some excuse about errands, leaving me with my son.
Oh yes, I’d beg. Anything. For David.
Now I just needed a car.
I was surprised when Dale didn’t answer his cell phone—usually he picked it up on the first ring.
“Dale, it’s me,” I said into the silence of his voice mail. “Listen, gimme a call. I need to talk to you. I’ve got a huge favour to ask.”
I hung up and started to go through my notebook, checking for things that I might need: Cat Took’s telephone number, her mailing address. Where was Belden, Oregon?
Bedtime Story Page 34
