“Mom,” he said. His voice crackled from bass to treble and back again. “Mom, I…”
Daniel Warren swept into the room. Five years had changed him little. At thirty-seven, he was still successful. His two dealerships had split to become four; he now spent much of his time on the road traveling from San Fernando to Coastal Crest to Ventura to Santa Barbara checking in with the managers at each location. He still dressed expensively, and his tailored clothing complemented his body well. He took good care of his body. It was taut and muscular, younger looking than his age. His mother was proud of how well he had kept himself, even though he no longer came over every Sunday afternoon for dinner. And he smiled a lot, a secretly self-satisfied smile that most people seemed to enjoy but that filled Miles’ throat with bile that burned like acid.
The man kissed Miles’ mother on the lips, then crossed around the table to run his hand through Miles’ hair. Miles tried to duck away and felt the fingers tighten momentarily on his hair, not much, not enough for his mother to notice but enough for him to feel and to understand that Daniel was still in charge. Totally in charge.
“I won’t be back until later tonight,” Daniel said softly to Elayne. His voice betrayed none of the pent-up tension that communicated itself like an electrical current through his fingers to Miles’ scalp. The man sounded for all the world like a normal father talking to a normal mother.
Elayne looked up sharply and opened her mouth as if to speak. Daniel cut her off without appearing to do so.
“Sorry, hon. We’ve got a manager’s conference in Ventura this afternoon. It may take a couple of hours.” He walked away from the table. “Love you,” he added as he took his briefcase and slipped out the kitchen door into the garage. The door closed behind him.
A moment later the whine of the electric garage opener-the first installed on Oleander Place-served notice that Daniel Warren was preparing to leave. Elayne toyed with a wedge of toast in front of her. Miles’ Cheerios were drowned beyond redemption, but he forced himself to eat a soggy spoonful anyway.
The garage door opener whined again as the door dropped, and the tiger roar of Daniel’s brand-new electric blue Corvette died away down Oleander before Elayne spoke again.
“We’re so lucky, Miles.” She concentrated on stirring her cooling coffee. “Daniel takes such good care of us.”
Considering what Miles had been about to say to her, he could only stare at his mother. She lifted her eyes and looked directly into his.
“I don’t know if I could take it…you know, having to be alone like that again. Working all the time. Wondering if we were going to go hungry next week, or where the rent payment was coming from. If I thought something, or someone was coming between us”-meaning herself and Daniel, Miles understood at once-“I’d do anything, anything to keep him. Anything. ”
She rose and set her empty plate and coffee mug in the sink. Her jelly-and-butter-smudged knife rattled a long, clattering dirge as it fell onto the porcelain. When she turned and stared at her son, her eyes held a strange expression that struck Miles as coldly across the face as a physical blow.
“What did you want to say to me, Miles?” she asked sweetly.
“Mom…,” he began. Then: “Nothing. I’m all right.” They never spoke of his looking tired again.
But as his fourteen year closed-the fifth since they had moved into the house on Oleander Place-Miles slept less and less.
7
The real dream-the dream beneath the dream, the one that nearly drove Miles mad with terror each time it began-started shortly after that discussion with Elayne, in late October of 1997.
The first time it came, Miles was not asleep in his bed. He lay naked on the floor of his room, his body curled into a tight ball, with his knees touching his chest, nearly touching his chin. His hands were clasped tightly over his shins, as if by holding on to each other they could create a lock against pain and fear and self-hatred and despair.
Daniel had just left. Miles knew that he should get back into his bed, that he should pull on his crumpled flannel pajamas and climb between the sheets that for almost every other fifteen-year-old in the world would mean warmth and comfort and peace but that for him had become synonymous with horror. He knew that if Daniel found him lying naked on the carpet in the morning, the next visit would be worse-Daniel had already warned him about such things.
No use taking any chances that your mother might happen to drop in early and see something she shouldn’t and get worried, right.
Miles knew that Daniel was capable of inflicting exquisite pain without leaving visible marks. The thought of punishment from that man chilled the boy. But tonight, the coldness sweeping over his spine felt uniquely right. Maybe he would catch pneumonia and burn with fever and cough his bloody lungs out and die. Maybe…
He lay with his head against the rough carpet. A thin line of blood trickled from the side of his mouth. Tell your mother you slipped going to the bathroom and hit the door jamb, Daniel had warned just before he left, She’ll believe that. She knows you’re a clumsy little shit.
It wasn’t the first time that Daniel’s visits had left Miles bleeding, but such occurrences were blissfully rare. Usually Miles tried to remove any evidence of blood-and so far Elayne had not noticed anything untoward. Tonight, though, he simply didn’t care. Let the bastard find me like this and kill me. Let her come in and see me naked and bloody on the flood and then try to pretend that everything’s just hunky-dory, her and Mr. Perfect.
His anger warmed him, even as he realized with a distant, almost disconnected part of his mind that the temperature in the room was dropping precipitously. His exposed skin crawled into goose bumps and he shivered violently. The movement caused a ripple of pain through him.
The blood thinned to a viscous drop that hung suspended at the corner of his mouth before dropping heavily to the carpet. Already the thick pile of the dark brown shag had absorbed most of the blood. Miles realized dimly that no one would even notice the stain by the time the blood dried.
No one but him.
His tongue brushed a cut in the inside of his cheek. The movement stung, but he chose to ignore it. For a moment, he stiffened. He thought he heard something in the hall. He raised his head an inch or two from the carpet and listened. It could be Daniel returning to make sure Miles was “safely in bed.” It might be his mother, although he could count on the fingers of one hand the times she had awakened during the night and come in to check on him. He wasn’t sure which prospect was the more inviting, which the more terrifying.
After a long moment, he decided that there had been no sound. He must have imagined it. He dropped his head to the carpet again. His ear rested on a rough, slight, unseen ridge only partially buffered by the thickness of carpet and pad.
The crack in the slab started in the corner of his room and arced across the center to disappear beneath the closet door. Miles had discovered the irregular edge only a few weeks after they had moved in. He spoke to no one about it. Sometimes he would spend long hours running his fingers along the phantom crack; sometimes he half believed that he could see the precise place where the floor started angling oh so marginally downward toward the far wall.
Tonight, he felt an odd comfort in lying against the crack, feeling its shadowy reality as a jagged line beneath his body. He lay without moving, his eyes closed, his heart thumping.