In the circle game.
Delmonico lights up. He winks at me before blowing out the match. Except there is no match, just the flame. How did he do that?
I squeeze my eyes shut. It’s all a dream, I tell myself. It has to be.
“No,” says Delmonico. “It was never a dream, Kristin.”
“Then there’s been a mistake. I’m not like you. You killed people.”
“You killed too. Don’t you remember?”
“That was different.”
“You’re right. That’s the thing about life; it’s not always so black and white.” He takes a long drag off his cigarette.
I feel something on my leg. It’s moving up my thigh, across my stomach.
“Get it off of me!”
Whatever it is, it climbs up my neck, onto my face. It crawls right past my mouth, over my eyes. Now I can see it! I’m screaming, terrified. It’s the biggest cockroach ever.
Delmonico raises his foot high. The heel of his shoe comes crashing down next to my head.
Crunch!
“As I said, Kristin, this is an interview.”
“An interview for what?” I ask.
“Well, to see where you fit in. You say you’re innocent, and yet you had that terrible affair with a married man. You’ve been self-centered for most of your life. And then there’s your poor little baby boy. Dead. Your fault. Yours and Matthew’s. Right here at the Fálcon. How could you?”
I stare at him, horrified that he knows everything. “What is this place, anyway?”
He sighs. “It’s where I died, for one thing, so that gets me a little sentimental, y’know. It’s a portal, Kristin, a gateway. To you-know-where. There are several of them in this big, bad city of New York. But listen to me rattle on. I’m doing all the talking here — and this is your day, Kristin.”
Chapter 109
I’M STARTING TO FEEL very afraid now, and I’m nauseated as well. I smell something burning again. Hives all over my body? Who knows? I have so many questions, I don’t know where to start.
I hear this slap, slap, slap — and I see that Delmonico is tapping his foot beside my head.
“I don’t have all day for this, missy. I should say, you don’t have a lot of time left.”
“For my interview?”
“Exactly. So talk to me. It’s almost time to go. We have to leave these hallowed halls.”
“Go where? Where am I going?”
“Oh, you know as well as I do. What is this you’re trying — the stupidity defense? ‘I’m not accountable because I’m dense?’ You’re not so dumb, Kristin. Boston College. Prelaw. Well, that wasn’t such a great choice, was it?”
“So the Fálcon Hotel is the portal, one of the gates — to my destination?”
Delmonico isn’t pleased. “I believe we’ve covered that ground already. But yes.”
I can barely speak. “Because? . . . I’ve made some terrible mistakes?”
“To put it mildly, yes. You’ve been a bad, bad girl. Like so many of your kind.”
My throat feels as if it’s closing up on me, but I still manage the next few words.
“Am I . . . a devil?”
At this, Delmonico has a hearty laugh. “Oh, you wish,” he says.
He sighs out loud, then starts to talk again.
“Here’s a way that might help you understand what’s going to happen to you. Growing up, in Brooklyn this was — near where you met up with the guy with the ponytail, actually — I went to Catholic grade school. I’ll never forget this one. Parish priest gives an inspirational talk to our class. Sixth grade, I think it was. The talk is all about eternity, eternal damnation, and how to comprehend it, as if that’s possible. The priest says, ‘Imagine there’s this tiny little blackbird, lives on a huge mountain in upstate New York or some other godforsaken place. And every thousand years, that little bird fills its beak with whatever it can carry and flies down to Brooklyn and deposits its mouthful in our school parking lot. Now, imagine that the blackbird does this until the entire mountain has been transported there. And that, ladies and gentlemen, would be just the beginning of eternity.’
“Here’s another thought for you. This whole nightmare, all of it, it’s been going on for about thirteen seconds. Start to finish, thirteen seconds. Count ’em — thirteen. So do you see how horrible an eternity of this would be?”
All of what has happened so far . . . it’s taken thirteen seconds? My God!
Delmonico flicks the ash of his cigarette, and some of it drifts down onto me.
“But what’s going to happen to me for eternity?” I ask.
“The dumb defense again. I love it,” Delmonico says and laughs. “Oh, you’ll see. You’ll find out soon enough. That’s a good one, missy. What happens next. How’s this for a sneak preview?”
Delmonico opens his mouth wider than I’ve ever seen a human mouth open. And then a rat sticks its furry head out the opening. The vermin looks at me, then it disappears back inside Delmonico. “Yum,” he says.
He laughs and laughs, and a smoke ring he blows floats over my head as he turns and walks back into the room, and the darkness.
“Is that the portal to hell in there?” I call to him. “Is it? Delmonico?”
Just then, though, a policewoman leans in very close to me, and I wonder if she’s going to move me somewhere.
But then — don’t think, just shoot — she takes my picture.
14
Chapter 110
TWO PARAMEDICS ROLL OUT a long plastic bag next to my body, zipper side up.
“Stop!” I plead. “I’m not dead! Please, please, won’t you stop?”
They raise my arms to tuck them in close to my sides, and I glimpse the blood dripping from my right hand.
“One, two, three,” they count. Then they lift me and deposit me into a body bag.
My God, my God, please, no. Don’t do this!
They close the zipper even as I continue to beg them not to do it, to give me a second chance for some reason that isn’t even clear to me.
I’ve never felt more helpless, more frightened or alone.
As they wheel me down the hall, into the elevator, and across the lobby, I stare out in horror and dread. Through the dark, dingy plastic, everything looks gray.
Even the red awning as I’m taken out of the hotel.
They push me toward the curb, the wheels of the gurney squeaking like sick birds as they spin against the pavement.
I listen to the murmuring of the crowd that’s gathered outside on the street. They’re wondering what happened.
Who died in there?
I keep screaming, “There’s been a horrible mistake. I’m not dead!”
But no one hears me.
Not the businessman in his pinstripe suit, the bike messenger, or the mother with her stroller, the same ones I saw in my dream. The strangers . . . who are now attending my funeral, so to speak.
I’m so scared now.
Please, God, make it stop! Please, God, please, God!
But he can’t hear me either.
Or worse, maybe he can and just doesn’t care about Kristin Burns.
Overhead, all I see are the police and EMS lights spinning against the buildings.
“Somebody do something! Get me out of here! Please! Somebody!”
The zipper to the body bag is inches from my eyes. It’s so close, but it might as well be miles away. I can’t reach it.
I can’t move.
But then the zipper starts to open — jarred, perhaps, by a crack in the sidewalk.
And that’s when I hear it — out on the street, pushing through the crowd — someone desperately screaming as loud as I am. The voice is thick with panic.
“HELP! THAT PERSON IS ALIVE!”
Closer and closer comes the voice, until the moment arrives when I see the face behind it, and all hope dies.
The horror comes full circle. The woman screaming outside the hotel?
She’s me!
In a few minutes, very soon, the dream will start again. I’ll wake up in my bed, screaming. I’ll hear the song. I’ll hear the knocking at my door. Mrs. Rosencrantz will be there.
And I will keep reliving these horrifying last days, over and over, until the tiny blackbird has transported that mountain, a beakful at a time, one trip every thousand years.
Only that will just be the beginning of eternity.
In you-know-where.
And I’m screaming, screaming, screaming, screaming . . .
Chapter 111
SO HERE I AM on my way to hell. As I understand it from Delmonico, I’ll keep reliving some version of the nightmare I’ve just experienced for eternity, for life everlasting. Definitely something to look forward to.
I can see around me clearly now, since nobody has bothered to rezip my body bag.
Actually, I’m glad of that. I get one last look around, and everything seems kind of strangely beautiful about the world, actually. The light is gauzy, with streaks of burnt orange and yellow laced through it. The faces of the people watching are actually sad, almost as if they care, and that touches me.
I want to cry, but I can’t really control my body anymore, can I? I wonder how much longer I have — until everything goes black or white or until this horrifying nightmare starts all over again.
And again.
And again.
How much time, Kris?
And how much time did I waste in my life? How many things did I do all wrong? Would I do them differently now?
I think I would. Honestly, and this isn’t a cop-out, I know I would live a different life. I feel so guilty . . . about my baby . . . about the affair with Michael . . . about hurting Dakota and Sean . . . even about hurting Penley, who was a twit but not an evil person.
I’m sorry. God, am I sorry. I’m so sorry, so pathetic, but I am sorry.
I can still hear the voices in the crowd outside the hotel.
The paramedics roll me between two police cars and toward a waiting EMS truck, the meat wagon. The gurney bumps something, and I realize how absurd it is to be careful when you’re carrying a dead body.
“Can’t somebody help me?” I say, though I know the voice is only in my mind, whatever and wherever that is. But I can’t stop pleading anyway. I won’t give up, won’t quit. Not ever. I won’t go quietly.
“Somebody help me . . .
“Somebody, please . . .
“I’m sorry for all my sins, for everything I did.”
Then a black woman leans in close, really close to my face, closer than I would ever get to a dead person. She shines a tiny flashlight into my eyes, and God do I want to blink — I’d do anything in the world to blink.
But I don’t blink.
“Somebody, please help,” I don’t say again.
And then the woman steps away from me, and I see that she’s an EMS doctor.
Suddenly, she yells in a clear voice, “This one is still alive!”
And I hope, I pray to God, that she’s right.
“She’s alive! This woman is alive! She just winked at me.”
About the Authors
JAMES PATTERSON is one of the best-known and bestselling writers of all time. He is the author of the two top-selling new detective series of the past decade: the Alex Cross novels, including Cross; Mary, Mary; London Bridges; Kiss the Girls; and Along Came a Spider, and the Women’s Murder club series, including 1st to Die, 2nd Chance, 3rd Degree, 4th of July, The 5th Horseman, and The 6th Target. He has written many other bestsellers, including his latest novel, The Quickie, and the #1 bestsellers Step on a Crack, Suzanne’s Diary for Nicholas, Lifeguard, Honeymoon, Beach Road, and Judge & Jury. He lives in Florida.
HOWARD ROUGHAN is the author of The Up and Comer and The Promise of a Lie, and most recently the coauthor, with James Patterson, of the #1 bestseller Honeymoon. He lives in Connecticut with his wife and son.
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