And the pale, delicate girl, whom she hadn’t really even met yet, on the mattress across the street, burning up with fever.
Colleen felt suddenly as she did in those dreams that assaulted her on so many nights, where she’d be working in a shaft atop a secured car and the joists abruptly gave way and she was falling, plunging into a bottomless shaft, back in that awful helpless child place where there was nothing she could do but hold on tight and fall endlessly into the blackness.
Was she angry because she didn’t believe him, or because she did?
She knew the answer.
So what to do now? Sit in the dark with the windows drawn, like Rory, shutting out the world? The world was always right there with you; you couldn’t outrun it, not really. By choosing or not choosing, you made your world, and your life. There was no standing still-or sitting still, for that matter, despite what Rory might say, there in his Barcalounger as the hours and days and years melted away.
And the image returned to her of the lobby this morning, before the storm came down, and the young man in the suit speaking up for her when no one would. And later, when he asked if she needed anything. And later still, when he asked without asking for her help.
Maybe she was falling; maybe they all were. But they could choose to fall together, perhaps somehow even stop the fall, or at least slow it.
“I DON’T NEED MORE CRAZINESS IN MY LIFE!!!” She shouted at the night, and it rang off the buildings.
But then, they hadn’t asked her, had they?
She turned back to Cal and was gratified to see his mouth hanging open. “Okay, I believe it, every last fucking bit of it.” She dragged her fingers through her short hair. “I mean, it’s not as if a lawyer would lie. . ”
He smiled then, and she liked what it did to his face.
The sound of a metal door creaking open echoed down the corridor of street, drew their attention. Doc stood in his doorway far below, bidding them return.
They descended the iron stairs, as the second day began.
Sam just didn’t know what to do with himself.
Pacing in the airless, cluttered living room, so alive with shadows and ghosts, frozen in time, he awaited Ely’s return.
A genie. His genie. To do whatever Sam commanded. And what had he wished for, so ardently desired, after the endless humiliations, the long, yearning years of frustration?
He had fantasized so many times in his loneliness, scrawled tiny, cramped miles of notes. All the shifting population of his life, the denizens of his street who swarmed like rats. How delicious, how dreamily satisfying to kill them all, one by one, ever so slowly, to maim and mangle them and, at last, at last, to make them pay. Judgment day.
But now here it was. And when he had shown Ely the infinity of notepads, indicated the offenses and slights, babbling his cherished daydreams, he found his exhilaration cooling to. .
Fear.
This was no fantasy now; no, no, this was real. And to really do what he had longed for, why, why. .
It would be monstrous.
He had tried to backpedal then. He just wanted Ely to scare them, really, to make them feel small and helpless and ridiculous, as they had made him feel so many, many times.
But Ely, towering over him like some gaunt god of scarecrows and desolation, had merely snatched the pad from him and chuckled. Then he had risen like an avenging angel and departed.
Sam contemplated running after him, overtaking him in the night-splashed street. But then the image of the one who had chased down Ely before, whom Ely had seized and sent hurtling to break against a wall, came to him with sickening vividness and shattered his resolve.
He fidgeted in his room in an agony of waiting, unable to be still, sweat gleaming on his brow and lip, saturating his armpits; his own smell disgusted him.
Then, after ten, fifteen minutes at most, he heard the frenzied barking, the awful shriek of what he knew must be a man, and other appalling sounds-like someone cracking wish-bones, but much louder. Terrified, furious, he tried to block it out, tried to convince himself that whoever it was, they deserved it. But the conceit wouldn’t hold. A dreadful nausea stole over him, and the room tilted, strobing pinpoints of light flashing before him in the darkness. He sat down on the velvet settee, breathing hard. Then he gained control of himself.
He might have gone to the window, gained final certainty, but there was no need. He knew.
Now a heavy trudging sounded, and Sam realized Ely was returning. Sam’s heart raced, his breath came fast and shallow, and suddenly he remembered the rest of Thief of Baghdad: how the genie, once released, had proven malevolent, how it had been impossible to get him back into the bottle, how what he had wanted to do more than anything was to kill.
For the first time in forever, Sam desperately wanted Mother there, wished he could summon her hard, merciless spirit back from the grave, to stand between him and this malignant force he had so recklessly invited into his home.
Outside, the porch slats groaned as Stern stepped onto them. Sam was seized with a wild urge to rush to the door, throw the bolt, lock it tight. But that would only make Ely angry, and it wouldn’t stop him.
The footfalls ceased. Silence, only the crickets in the night. Sam held his breath.
The doorbell rang.
Under it, another sound erupted in the room, and Sam was laughing, giggling hysterically.
Ely was one for details, oh, indeed he was, such a precise touch, so taunting, so scornful… and so clearly a summons.
The cruel meaning of it fell in on Sam like the roof collapsing, like the weight of rafters. Here was no liberator, no deliverance, merely another tormentor, the crowning one, without peer. Oh, it was funny, to die for. .
Tears sprang to Sam’s eyes, stinging, and he found his laughter turning to shrieks, which he stifled, panic blossoming like a wound in him. His feet leaden, he walked to the door, threw it open.
Stern stood on the threshold, his incredible bulk filling the doorway. He stepped through, ducking his head under the frame. Sam moved aside, making room, and then eased the door shut.
He saw that Ely was holding something out to him. A leash, a short leash.
“That pooch can run with the wolves now,” Stern said. Taking the leash, Sam found it sticky with congealing liquid. Then he spied Stern’s carmine-soaked hands.
“I’ll try not to touch anything,” Stern mocked.
Crazily, needing to say anything to stop from screaming, Sam found himself murmuring, “Bloodstains are a terror to get out.”
“You should read Heloise,” Stern replied and swept through the living room toward the bathroom.
Woodenly, imprisoned, Sam fetched a pitcher of water, found Stern before the mirror, stripped to the waist, appraising himself in the glow of the oil lamp. Sam could see that he hadn’t been imagining things; Ely was even larger than he had been before running his dread errand, bonier and more muscular, his face continuing to extend, his skin to roughen. Skeletal projections erupted at surprising points all over his torso, and Sam noted odd protrusions beginning to press out below Ely’s shoulder blades. I’m becoming, Stern had said. He most certainly was.
Sam raised the pitcher over the basin and heard his voice, leeched of emotion. “Hands. Ely, your hands.”
“Hm? Oh.” Stern extended his hands over the basin as Sam poured. Water flooded over them, dripped off the thick nails that, Sam saw, were growing more like talons, true claws. The blood washed away, swirled down the drain.