Three straight nights, and the strain showed. Personal grooming had gone totally by the boards. His face was unshaven, his standard khaki pants and Oxford shirt were wrinkled, his tie was coffee-stained—none of which he seemed to notice. Creases that Thomasine had never seen were firmly etched on his forehead. His eyes were painfully bloodshot. Someone not knowing him might have guessed he was pushing fifty, not still in his mid-thirties.
And so this afternoon of the Sunday before Christmas, Thomasine insisted on spelling him. You need your own bed for a night, she said. Just one night. The way you’re going you’re headed for a coronary. Bostwick backed her up. It’ll do you good, he urged. A world of good.
“She needs me,” Brad protested.
“She needs you alive,” Thomasine retorted.
“I won’t be able to sleep.”
“Then get drunk,” Thomasine suggested. “Get shit-faced, falling-down drunk. You’ll be able to sleep then.”
He thought he might like that. Yes, he thought he might like that a lot. A one-night bender, with no one but the walls to talk to, might do the trick. Too bad he didn’t have a gram or so of coke. A few lines and about a case of beer would do wonders.
“You’ll take care of her?” he asked Thomasine.
“Of course.”
“Stay by her side the whole night?”
“The whole night.”
“And call me if anything happens—anything at all?”
“Go, Brad,” she insisted gently. “Go.”
He did. When he got home, the green light was lit on the answering machine. He ignored it. He was going to get drunk, just as Thomasine ordered. There were two six-packs of Beck’s in the refrigerator, but he made a last-minute decision against them. Instead, he went to the china closet, pulled out the Tanqueray, and brought it into the kitchen. Did he have quinine water? Yes, he did: an unopened bottle of Schweppes. Lime? He had one of those, too, left over from a dessert Thomasine had made a million years ago, when times were good. Except for a veneer of mold, which wiped right off, it was fine. He filled a juice tumbler with ice and mixed himself a nice cold monster gin and tonic. It was a summer drink, but it was what he wanted, damn it. There were nothing but good, fair-weather thoughts associated with G&Ts. He could use some of those now.
But none came. As he drank his first G&T, and his second, and his third, the one where the buzzing started inside his head, he could think of nothing but Abbie.
The answering machine. On his fourth drink he remembered he hadn’t gone through its messages.
Should he?
Of course not. Don’t be a fool.
And what if it’s Bostwick? Thomasine? What if it an urgent message from the hospital? What if Abbie woke up wanting me?
What if she’s—
He half ran, half stumbled into the front hall. After fumbling with the push-buttons, he got the machine going.
It was Heather.
Pisser.
Yes, this is just what Brad Gale needs, folks. Just when you thought things couldn’t possibly get worse, here comes Heather.
How long was it since she’d been in touch? Brad groped around inside his drunkenness for the answer. Since before Thanksgiving, wasn’t it? Yes. God bless Heather, loving mother that she was. So terribly concerned for the health and well-being of her daughter, whom she hasn’t seen or called or probably devoted a minute’s thought to in, oh, only two months.
“What’s going on with Abbie?” the tinny voice on the tape demanded. “If I don’t hear from you by tonight, I’m calling the state police. Heather. Sunday, December twenty-first, two-thirty P.M.”
Police were not a threat Brad took lightly. During the tail end of their marriage, when Brad had moved out with Abbie, she’d called the cops four times on him. Once he’d almost been arrested. He fixed another gin and tonic, doubling up on the gin, and dialed her number.
“Yeah?” the voice answered. With this buzzing in his ears, it was hard to determine from that one word if she was drunk, too.
“Returning your call,” he said. He was preparing himself for—for what? An inquisition? Small-megatonnage thermonuclear attack? Or tears in her beers for her poor, sick little girl? Heather was like Berkshire weather, impossible to predict.
“What the fuck’s going on up there?” she shouted. So it’s thermonuclear attack, Brad thought.
“Abbie’s in the hospital.”
“I know.”
“How’d you find out?”
“How do you suppose? It’s been all over the news.”
“Not Abbie’s name.”
“I called the paper looking for you. Whoever answered the phone told me. But never mind all that. How’s Abbie?”
“She’s doing all right,” he said. It was a lie. Abbie was terrible—worse than when she’d been admitted. Sleeping most of the time. Disoriented those rare occasions when she was awake. Not eating, not even the ice cream they were plying her with.
“Doing all right? You call being in serious condition in the hospital doing all right?”
“They think it’s only the flu,” he lied.
“Flu? That’s not what they’re saying on the news. I think you’re full of shit.”
“What’s the purpose of the call, Heather?”
“The purpose of the call, asshole, is my daughter. I’m concerned.”
“Please,” Brad hooted. “Please don’t make me laugh.”
“I don’t like the care she’s getting.”
“What the hell do you know about the care she’s getting? Your boyfriend been filling that pretty little head with medical gobbledygook, and now all of a sudden you’re the expert? Is that it? Abbie’s getting the best care money can buy.”
“She’s being treated at Hooterville Hospital and you have the nerve to say she’s getting the best care money can buy?”
That’s when he lost it.
“If you’re so concerned, what the hell are you doing still in New York?” he shouted. “Why aren’t you up here spending the night with her, smoothing her brow, holding a cold facecloth to her forehead for hours on end the way I’ve been? Why aren’t you up here, telling her everything’s going to be OK, that she’s not going to . . . pass away, for God’s sake? Who are you to criticize me when all she was to you for four years was a roadblock to your stardom?”‘
He went on for several minutes.
At some point (the next day, trying to reconstruct the scene, he would not be able to remember exactly which point) he realized that the line had gone dead. She’d hung up on him, the bitch. He swore, considered throwing the phone, then thought better of it. He stood, phone in one hand, drink in the other, his anger fizzling. It was surprising how quickly it was dissipating, although it was not surprising how quickly it had built. He supposed he was too tired to sustain emotion like that at fever pitch.
Fuck her, he thought. I’m not going to let her get to me. Not tonight.
He got a new line, dialed the hospital, and was connected to Thomasine, who told him that everything was under control. Abbie was sleeping, and he ought to be doing the same. He thanked her, promised all three of them a trip to Bermuda during winter vacation, then hung up. Thomasine was right. He’d probably be able to sleep tonight. At least a few hours. At least until dawn. Then he’d get up and try to get some breakfast into his daughter.
The drowsiness he felt now was inviting, welcome. It wasn’t that Abbie wasn’t on his mind any longer, but her presence there now wasn’t as hurtful. The gin had finally cast its summertime spell, and the good memories were cascading over him in waves. Abbie’s first day of school, his daughter looking so beautiful it took his breath away. Abbie and Jimmy at the fair. Abbie in the Mustang, trying to find one of her favorite songs on the dash radio. Abbie and Mrs. Fitzpatrick at the Boar’s Head Inn. Abbie and Daddy shopping. Abbie and Daddy building a snow fort. Abbie picking out her puppy.
The dog. The goddamn dog.
Oh, Jesus. He’d forgotten to feed it.
He went out the back. The sky was spitting snow, but the moon peeked from behind clouds that were rolling by at furious speed. Winter was coming all right. It was already here. The old-timers who dropped by the paper every now and again had assured him that once you hit the end of December in the Berkshires, you could expect a solid two months of the deep freeze, not to mention, oh, maybe eight feet of snow in an average season, ten or more in a toughie. And figure, as a rule of thumb, three major blizzards.
Somehow, their dire predictions weren’t so frightful anymore. He could handle weather. Weather was a breeze.
Maria was in her usual spot in the garage, the far corner where old tires and some garden tools were piled in a heap. She’d heard his footsteps approach on the frozen ground, the creak of the door opening, his hand groping for the light switch. She watched him now, an intruder. An unwelcome intruder. The cause of this hunger slowly gnawing away at her insides.
“Goddamn mutt,” Brad muttered as he picked up an almost empty bag of Alpo. One meal was all that was left. Screw it. If the dog never ate again, it wouldn’t be any skin off his back. If only Abbie weren’t so attached to her . . .
Maria growled.
Brad heard it.
Halfway across the garage floor, he stopped and stared. In the harsh glow of the one naked ceiling bulb the dog didn’t look right. For well over a month she had been acting queerly—he would never forget the day she lunged at Abbie—and he had been wary of her. But the dog had never looked this menacing. Her teeth were bared, her muscles tensed, as if ready to spring. She didn’t look like your basic hungry pooch. She looked rabid. Going down the tubes and going fast.
Thank God she’s on her chain.
He remembered a story Rod Dougherty had done several weeks ago. It was an interview with Morgantown’s animal control officer on the occasion of his twenty-fifth year on the job. At the end of the interview the officer had let slip that he had never seen a year like this year. Never had so many dogs and cats in the pound, left there by owners who said they couldn’t control them anymore. Animals that acted rabid, although his careful testing had disclosed not one case of rabies. It was the dangedest thing he’d ever seen, the officer allowed. His own personal theory was it had something to do with sunspots.
Brad approached along the back wall. When he was about five feet from the chain’s outer limit, he tossed the food. The pellets showered down around the dog with a sound like hail on a tin roof.
“Here’s your food.”
He’d turned his back when the dog leaped.
The chain snapped. Brad heard the pop.
Maria hit Brad at hip level, sending him crashing into the wall. He toppled softly to the concrete, his drunkenness cushioning the blow. For a second he couldn’t believe what had happened. Then he saw the dog, smelled her, heard her jaws snapping at his sleeve. He was amazed, but he was too drunk to be immediately scared.
“What the hell—”
Maria backed off and stopped in the middle of the garage floor—whether ready to attack again or not, Brad didn’t know.
The dog’s growling had increased from background static to full-throated aggression.
Brad got to his feet. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Not Maria—not that lovable, oversize, pick-of-the-litter Golden that nice farmer had let Abbie have almost four months ago. Not that faithful, growing-like-a-weed companion to his daughter . . . at least until a month or so ago. This was a forty- or fifty-pound dog, big and strong enough to bust a chain. But it wasn’t size that had Brad flipped out. It was those teeth—long, sharp, lethal.
“Easy, pup.” Brad edged toward the door, his back scraping rakes and shovels and other tools that were hung from the wall. He felt his testicles tighten. He was suddenly, thoroughly sober.
Maria seemed to sense his fear, seemed to feed on it, seemed to be enraged and emboldened by it. Brad could see saliva, glistening on the dog’s bared incisors, dripping down her black gums onto the concrete floor.
The dog’s rabid, Brad thought, his fear escalating to terror. “Easy, now . . .”
He was approaching the door when Maria dropped into a low crouch, her muscles coiled and tense, like a cougar ready to pounce. If the dog sprang, Brad might not be so lucky this time. Might not make it to the door. Might find those teeth clamped down on his hand, or leg . . . or throat.
Brad groped behind him for his ax or the maul he’d used to split half a cord of wood. His hand contacted a garden hose, the lawn mower handle, a spade.
No ax. No maul.
He got a good grip on the spade.
He brought it to chest level.
“Easy, pup,” he managed to say, inching toward the door again, wielding the spade like a hockey stick. If he could just get out, close the door, lock it, call the police or the dog officer . . .
Maria attacked.
Brad swung.
It was a direct hit. The sound of spade contacting the dog’s skull was like two rocks colliding. Maria went limp at Brad’s feet, and blood began gushing from her ear. She convulsed several times and was still.
Brad watched, detached at first, then horrified. Tears began to fill his eyes.
Abbie, I’m so sorry, he thought, even though he knew then he could never tell her the truth. I’m so sorry I killed your dog. I’m so sorry you had to get sick, and Daddy had to go crazy, and everything had to turn so awful when it was supposed to turn so right. I’ll make it up to you, Apple Guy, I promise. Make it up to you a hundred times, a million, make it all better.
We’ll get another puppy, and if you want to name it Maria, too, that’s fine. It will be a wonderful puppy, and it will grow into a wonderful dog, and if you want it to sleep at the foot of your bed, well, that’s OK, Apple Guy. Really, it is.
As the blood ran in widening rivers across the floor, Brad buried his head in his hands and let the tears come. They came, violently, mercilessly.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
Monday, December 22
Morning
Breakfastless, Brad arrived at the hospital at six-thirty Monday morning. On his way to Abbie’s room he stopped at the cafeteria for coffee. He needed something in him, even if it was only caffeine.
Ginny Ellis was at one of the tables, alone, slumped over a Coke. For all Brad knew, she could have been there, frozen like that, all night.
“Hi,” Brad said when he’d gone through the line, mostly nurses coming aboard the seven-to-three shift.
“Hi,” Ginny said wearily.
“Been here long?”
“I just came down. It’s the first time I’ve left his room since he came in. He was sleeping, and . . . you don’t think I’m being awful, do you? I’m going back in five minutes.”
“Of course, I don’t think you’re awful. You need a break. I went home,” Brad said, almost guiltily. “They insisted. You should try a night, too. It would do you a world of good.” And if Jimmy’s got a favorite pet, he thought blackly, you could kill it. That’s what I did when I went home. Got shit-faced and went out and clubbed the dog to death.
“How is she?” Ginny asked. For an instant Brad thought she meant Maria.
“Abbie?”
“Yes.”
“She’s the same, according to the front desk. I’m just on my way up. How about Jimmy?”
“No different.”
“Maybe today’s his day.”
“Maybe.”
Brad nodded understandingly. “Maybe if they both feel better a little later, they could visit.”
“Sure.”
“It might pick them both up.”
“Sure.”
Brad finished his coffee and left. Ginny didn’t move. Still slumped over her can of Coke. They could drop the Big One, Brad thought, and she wouldn’t budge.
When he got to her room, Abbie was asleep. Thomasine was not. She was sitting by the bed, reading the Bos
ton Globe and drinking coffee a nurse had brought her. She looked surprisingly fresh, as if she had sneaked home to her own bed last night, not been tortured on a fold-up cot. Surprisingly beautiful. God, we’ve come a long way in this relationship, he thought, that she would do this for me, and I would let her. I don’t know where you came from, Thomasine, or who sent you, or why . . . I only know that right now, you and Abbie are all I have.
“Good morning,” he said, kissing the back of her neck.
“Good morning.” She smiled.
“Was it a good night?”
“Yes. She was only up twice. Went right back both times.”
“Did she ask for me?”
“Unh-unh.”
“And what about you?”
“I slept.”
“Tell the truth.”
“I did.”
“Thanks, Thom. Thanks an awful lot.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Did you sleep?”
“Without a problem.”
Just like I killed Maria—without a problem. Her bloody corpse is still on the garage floor, should you want to see for yourself.
They chatted, exchanging details of their respective nights—minus Maria. Thomasine had just asked him to join her in the conference room—she had something she wanted him and no one else to hear, she’d said—when Abbie moaned, tossed, then opened her eyes. She looked slowly around the room, seemed to recognize both of them. Seemed to smile, wanly but happily.
Was it only wishful thinking, or did she actually look better?
“Hi, Dad,” she said.
“Good morning, Apple Guy. How do you feel, hon?” He sat on the side of her bed and leaned over, kissing her. He was careful not to get tangled in her IV tube or heart monitor leads, a brightly colored bundle of tiny wires that disappeared under her pajama top.
“I’m thirsty, Dad.”
“Then let’s get you a drink. Would you like ginger ale?”
She nodded. Thomasine handed Brad a Dixie cup of it, and he passed it to Abbie. She drank it in one swallow. Another good sign, he dared to think.
“Dad?” she asked when her thirst was slaked.
A Haunting of Horrors: A Twenty-Novel eBook Bundle of Horror and the Occult Page 577