She blew out a stream of smoke, came forward, slapped his bad knee, and said, “So you finally made it. What the hell took you so long?”
“You were expecting me?”
“I was hoping,” Nora said.
“To tell you the truth,” Sweeney said. “I didn’t have much say in the matter.”
Nora gave him a sour look and made a dismissive sound, blew some air through pursed lips.
“Of course you did,” she said. “Everyone has a choice. That’s all you’ve got. Choices up the wazoo.”
Sweeney didn’t want to argue with her. “What is this place?” he asked.
“Didn’t Danny tell you?” she said. “It’s home.”
“This isn’t my home,” he said. “I’ve never lived in a place like this.”
“Sweeney, honey,” Nora said, “your memory isn’t what it used to be.”
“I don’t think I can stay here, Nora.”
“You think too much, mister. I’d say that’s your number one problem. You overthink everything. My Ernie had the same tendency, by the way.”
“I’ve got bigger problems than that, Nora.”
She closed her eyes, shook her head.
“I knew you’d say that, Sweeney. I really did. I’m sorry but you’re as predictable as one of my romances.” She leaned forward again and knocked her paperback deeper into the flames. In a lower voice, she added, “It drove Kerry nuts you know.”
“You didn’t know Kerry,” he said and immediately regretted it. He realized that she was baiting him but couldn’t stop himself from giving her what she wanted.
“Let me tell you something about Kerry,” Nora said, angry now. “Kerry deserved better. Kerry deserved to be forgiven.”
“I did forgive her,” yelling now, “I swear to you I did.”
Nora wouldn’t look at him. She was staring at the fire. She said, “That’s right, swear to me.” And then she didn’t say anything else.
He waited a few minutes, watched the last of the paperback turn black and crumple into ash. Then he stood and said, “I have to find Danny.”
Nora rummaged in the chair cushion until she found her cigarettes. And Sweeney moved up to the second floor of the castle.
THE STAIRS WERE grand-hotel wide but much too steep. Sweeney had to concentrate to be sure of his footing. It was as if each ledge had been fashioned into different heights. There was no way to gain a rhythm and run to the landing.
When he reached the top, he stopped by the railing that formed a balcony over the foyer. He was dizzy and so winded that he wondered about the altitude. He looked down over the banister and was hit with a wave of vertigo. Turning around, he went down on his bad knee and let out a yell. It echoed a bit down the three corridors that stretched off the landing and ignited a distant burst of laughter.
The laughter seemed to come from the left, so he moved in that direction and suppressed the urge to call out for Danny. The corridor was tall but narrow, like the halls of the Clinic. The floor was marble, covered by a green runner. The walls were covered in wainscoting, but they were lined with mounted torches that threw shadows and left large pockets of darkness.
He found them in the billiard room. They were at the far end, beyond the tables, which were covered in animal skins — cow and leopard and zebra hides. He stood in the doorway for a while. Romeo, the janitor, saw him first but didn’t acknowledge it, turned his eyes back to his cards and hunched down over his drink. It looked like a sullen crew, locked into one of those dead games that refuses to end. Ernesto Luga slouched down in his chair, eyes half-closed. Though they had their backs to him, Sweeney knew the other players were Tannenbaum and Gögüs, the Clinic’s associate neurologists.
For the moment, he ignored them and moved to one of the billiard tables where Irene Moore was laid out like a corpse in its casket. Her skin had turned from white to a gray tinged with yellow. She was on her back, lit by a Tiffany lamp that hung from a chain of oversized metal links. Her skull was resting on two rubber bumpers. And she was naked.
“He’s gonna climb on top of her,” he heard Ernesto say. “I’ll bet all my chips he’s gonna slip her the chicken.”
The words were dull and muted, as if spoken underwater. Sweeney ran the back of his hand over Irene Moore’s cheek. The skin was icy but she opened her eyes at his touch and he jumped backward and collided with another table.
Then he felt a hand on his shoulder and turned to find Tannenbaum next to him. The doctor was looking down on Irene Moore, shaking his head theatrically.
“Why don’t you sit in for me,” Tannenbaum said. “I’m busted. And there’s nothing you can do for this one.”
Sweeney shook his head in agreement, then leaned down and brought his mouth to Irene’s. Her lips were cold but smooth. He pulled some air in through his nose, pushed it out into the adjoining mouth. In response, he felt her tongue come to life and move against his own for a second, before continuing, pressing forward like a snake, until it touched the back of his throat and he began to choke. He jerked backward but she had her arms around his neck.
He swung his arm and broke her grip, fell to the floor, scrambled upright, and ran from the game room as the card players broke into hysterical laughter. He raced down corridors that merged into corridors. Took rights and lefts, vaulted more than one flight of stairs and didn’t manage to control the panic until he was entirely lost.
Eventually, he found himself at the top of the castle. The ceilings were lower here and the corridors shorter. He walked them, throwing open each door and poking his head inside each room to find a series of identical cells, stark chambers fixed under the eaves, each outfitted with only a coffinlike bed, a porcelain washbasin, and a matching pitcher. The cells looked out, through a chapel window of blue glass, onto an expanse of roaring ocean on one side of the hall, and the marshlands and swamps on the other.
Entering the last room, he knelt down before the window and drank from the pitcher. The water inside was warm and stale but he couldn’t get enough of it. He tipped the pitcher too quickly, spilling it down his chest. When he’d drained the last of the water, he dried his mouth with the hem of his shirt, unzipped his pants, and urinated into the basin.
On his way back out, he glanced at the bed and saw the book that was almost hidden beneath the pillow. He sat down and extracted it and found the final issue of Limbo. The issue that he and Danny had purchased on the day of the accident. The cover featured a jagged title balloon that screamed
“Freaks No More”
The End
of
Their Journey!
in scarlet lettering. The cover drawing depicted the troupe at the base of a towering cliff, looking up at the black iron castle of Dr. Fliess, the madman genius who had tracked them relentlessly.
Sweeney rolled the comic into a tube, tucked it in his back pocket and exited the cell. He moved to the last door at the end of the hall, put his hand on the knob and, in that instant, heard Danny’s laugh from inside. He turned the knob and pushed, found the door bolted and began to pound. And as he hammered his fist against the freezing slate of the door, Danny’s laughter turned to crying. And then to screaming.
Sweeney kicked at the door. Heaved his shoulder at the door. Began to yell for his son. His knuckles started to bleed. Something ruptured in his throat and his yell turned into a rasp. He got down on his back, stomped against the door with the bottoms of his feet. There was no give, no sense of progress.
He got to his knee and then stood, moved halfway down the corridor and ran at the door, threw his body into it, crashed and slumped, stunned. He sat up, blinked, brought a hand to his forehead and took it away bloody. He got back on his knees, put both hands on the doorknob and yelled, as loud as he could, for his boy.