He lay next to her trying to think of a noncrazy way of bringing the subject up, but took too long; her breathing settled into the rhythms that meant the god of sleep had gathered her in his arms. So he lay there, mind spinning faster and faster, stomach cramping, until he decided he may as well get up.
As he padded out into the hallway, he passed the door to the spare room. Maybe he could use the time to sort through the stuff, if he did it quietly—at least get one positive thing out of the day. He went in and shut the door. He didn’t bother to turn on the light. There was enough moonlight coming through the window.
He pulled the lids of the boxes open and took everything out, arranging it around where he sat. It was the same stuff he’d seen before. Nothing surprising. Nothing he’d forgotten about. No big reveals. A few souvenirs of once having had parents, books that a much younger version of himself had loved. The only interesting thing about these was the authors. Ray Bradbury. Philip K. Dick. Stephen King. These were the kind of stories he’d enjoyed and yet he’d gone on to sell a literary novel. He knew why that was—but what next? Did he carry on pretending to be that guy when he had no right, or should he to try to find a route back to who he was? Was there even anything left to return to?
The books felt like they belonged to someone else. The house felt like it did, too.
There was a noise from downstairs.
He walked quietly out onto the landing. The noise had seemed to come from directly beneath the spare room. The kitchen. A scraping sound.
He went to the bedroom and poked his head around the door to check that it wasn’t Dawn waking and going downstairs to see what he was up to. She was fast asleep. So what did he do now? Stay where he was, at the top of the stairs, and wait to see if someone came up them?
He started slowly down the staircase, carefully lowering each foot, using years of familiarity with the house to stick to the outside of the treads so as not to set off any creaks. He hesitated before turning the corner at the return, listening as hard as he could. All he could hear was the sound of rushing in his ears.
He quickly took the next step, bending at the waist so as to be able to see down into the hallway right away. Something was off about the light. He couldn’t tell what, but he knew now that he hadn’t imagined the sound.
He waited, motionless, expecting to see a shape or shadow crossing the hallway. Nothing happened.
Very slowly, holding on to the banister to help him get around the corner soundlessly, he started down the lower flight. By the time he got to the bottom it was obvious what was unusual about the light in the hallway.
The front door was open.
Knowing now that he was dealing with a very real situation, David stopped. The door was open. Only nine inches or so, but open is open.
But did that mean someone was inside, or had been inside? You had to work on the assumption someone was still inside, surely.
So … did he creep back upstairs, use the phone in his study to call the cops? What if the intruder came up the stairs when he was doing that, or before the police arrived? Presumably they’d left the door open to make it easier to escape. Would it be better to make as much noise as possible now, in the hope of scaring them off?
The front door closed.
David blinked at it. It looked like a hand had pulled it shut—from the outside. That’s all he’d seen—a hand pulling the handle.
The hand hadn’t been there, and then it was.
He waited, poised awkwardly with his feet on two different stairs, strain settling into the muscles in his legs. Nothing else happened.
He walked down the last two steps. He crept over to the tall and narrow window next to the front door. He kept well back in the darkness, craning his neck to see if there was anyone out there on the path.
He couldn’t see anyone. He turned his head and checked the sidewalk down on the street. No one there either. He waited and heard nothing.
So he reached out for the door and opened it.
Cold air came in, along with moonlight, the factor that had keyed him in to the door being open in the first place. He went out onto the step. The stone was very cold underfoot. The street was silent, dead, and empty. He looked left and he looked right. He saw no one.
He did not look up, and so he did not see the three tall, thin people lying on the roof, their faces hanging over the edge, grinning down at him.
When he had the door shut behind him again David stood in the hallway. He didn’t know for sure that the house was empty, of course. The fact that (he thought) he’d seen a hand pulling the door from the outside didn’t prove there was no one left in the interior. It didn’t feel like it. He realized that while he’d been on the stairs he’d known there was someone in the house. He could feel it.
He could then, anyhow. Now it felt otherwise. Was he prepared to trust that intuition?
He walked to the sitting room, took a breath, and slipped his head around the door. An empty room, looking staged, as they did in the night, familiar objects and furniture turned into sets.
He didn’t think it likely that someone would be in the half bathroom, but he checked anyway. Then he walked toward the kitchen.
It was obvious from the doorway that something was wrong, but in the darkness it took him a moment to work out what. It was something about the color and texture, and it was all over the place.
He turned on the light. The room was covered in pieces of paper. It jumped into his head that it must be Talia’s book, but then he remembered that he’d never printed it out. There were sheets on the table, across the floor, on the counters. Literally all over the place.
He bent down and picked up the nearest. It was blank. He pulled another few pieces toward him and saw they were the same. Blank. On both sides.
He moved around the kitchen, gathering up pieces of typing paper until he’d gotten them all.
Chapter 50
Waking the morning after a serious fight is not good. My body felt like it had been dismantled in my sleep and put back together in basically the right shape, but without whatever cushioning substance normally stops the parts from scraping against one another. My head was no better, but I woke up with a resolution fully formed. I was going home. It might be a crappy apartment with barely enough room to swing a cat (soon after we’d moved in, somewhat drunk, Kris and I had established this was technically possible using a cardboard mock-up), but it was mine.
I opened my eyes to find I was alone in the narrow bed. Kris was perched on the arm of the comfortable chair, looking out the window.
“What time is it?”
“Just after seven,” she said.
“How long have you been awake?”
“Didn’t sleep.”
“At all? Why?”
“Keeping an eye on the bare-knuckle fighter. I woke you a couple of times to make sure you didn’t think you were Napoleon. Don’t you remember?”
I shook my head, found the movement hurt, and said no instead. “So am I out of the woods?”
“Search me. I’m a barmaid, not a neurologist. Check this out, though.”
I hauled myself over to the window. From there you could see down and across to the church. Father Jeffers was standing there alone.
“What’s he doing?”
“Nothing,” she said. “I heard him leave the building—about two minutes after the phone downstairs rang. He’s been there half an hour.”
“Waiting for?”
“That would be the question.”
Not sure I needed to know the answer, I went into the bathroom. This showed no sign of recent habitation. It was clean but otherwise could have been in a museum. White tiles, an unsmeared mirror, a neatly folded fawn towel hanging off a rail, and a white sink and shower stall. I established that the last of these functioned, and undressed gingerly. There were a lot of bruises but they were hurting less as my body warmed up, and the sight of each just made me more resolved.
I was out of the shower and halfwa
y back into my clothes when Kristina called out, “Quick—come here!”
We pressed our faces up against the glass. At first I could only see one person coming up the street, intermittently visible through the trees. A slim man, in a suit. He was running up the middle of the road. He ran for a while, at least, then stopped and whirled around. Then he was running again.
“Is that the guy from the hospital?”
“Yes,” I said. “And look who else.”
Two people were following in his wake, one on either sidewalk as if to shepherd him. A woman in a red dress under a black coat and a man in jeans.
“Lizzie,” I said. “I’ve seen the guy before, too.”
“I think that’s Maj,” Kris said
By the time we stepped out of the house Lizzie and the other guy had managed to coral Billy toward the church. He was still fighting it—not with aggression or ill will, but hectic enthusiasm. He was like a child on a sugar rush, right at the moment when it’s all just uncontrollably fantastic and the best possible way to feel and you believe everybody else must be finding all this as hilarious as you are. He kept darting toward the other two as if about to make a getaway up the street, but then turning back in a circle, arms held out like a bird. He didn’t really want to escape. He was happy where he was. He would, by the look of it, be happy just about anywhere.
As we got closer we realized that wasn’t the whole story. He was very pale, with a slick of perspiration over his face. As we got in range, he stopped whirling and stared at me, blinking rapidly.
“I know you,” he said. “I know you. I know you.”
He laughed loudly before trying to dart off down the road again. Maj moved to put himself in his way, effectively forcing him through the gate and into the church enclosure. Once there, Billy seemed to recognize his surroundings and looked up at the stairs.
“Hey, Father,” he called. “Look at me!”
“I see you,” Jeffers said. “I’ve always seen you.”
“But not like now, huh?”
“You’re certainly very visible this morning.”
“Ha!”
“You look a little worn-out, though. Why don’t you come inside. Catch your breath.”
“Aha, no,” Billy said, with a smile of low cunning. “I’ve been in there before. I want to see new things.”
“Of course you do,” the priest said. “I have new things inside.”
“What kind of things?” Billy said. “Are they green? Are they sandpapery?”
“Not especially. But I have pastries. And coffee.”
“Ooh.”
Billy hesitated. When he stopped moving, I realized the damp glow over his face did not look like sweat. It looked like something viscous seeping from the pores. His fingers were twitching. His hair looked like straw, and he was scrawny inside his disheveled suit.
Maj remained outside the gate, ready to bar an escape. Lizzie stood farther back, one hand in front of her mouth. She looked composed in sadness, as if happening upon a photograph of somebody now gone, someone she hadn’t realized how much she missed.
Billy was breathing more heavily. The power that had seemed to thrum through him was abating. He blinked, his eyes staying closed for a beat too long.
“I feel silly,” he said distractedly. “I … I’ve forgotten something. What is it?”
“Come inside,” Jeffers said softly.
Billy seemed to be having second thoughts, but he looked weary now. He didn’t look as if he could make it up the stairs, never mind go haring off down the street.
Maj walked into the enclosed area and came up behind him. He leaned forward and said something in Billy’s ear. Whatever it was, it seemed to perk the other man up.
“Really?” he said, looking round. The look broke my heart. It was the kind a boy might give his father if, some sunny afternoon, the man had decided to treat his son to an ice cream cone out of the blue.
Maj nodded. Billy smiled, a small boy’s grin that changed his face so much it was hard to remember what it had looked like before. He waved to Lizzie before running off up the stairs, past the priest, and into the church.
Maj followed, more slowly. Jeffers walked down the steps past him and over to the gate.
“Thank you, Lizzie,” he said.
“You asked,” she said. “So I did it. That’s all.”
She looked upset, as though she wanted no part of whatever was about to happen.
“It’s the right thing,” Jeffers said. “Will you come by later?”
She walked away without answering. Jeffers watched for a moment, then hurried up the stairs and into the church, closing the door behind him.
“I’m going after her,” Kris said. She pecked me on the cheek.
I let myself in through the church gate.
Jeffers was a man of his word. There was a tray on the table by the wall under the lackluster stained-glass windows. Billy was stuffing baked goods into his mouth. Jeffers meanwhile busied himself with moving prayer books from one neat pile into another.
Maj had turned around one of the chairs in the back row and was watching Billy with a complicated expression. There was something of the look Lizzie had given the priest in it, but a touch of envy, too.
Jeffers smiled. “How’s that taste, Billy?”
“Great,” Billy said, voice indistinct. “Fucking great.”
“That’s good. Would you like some coffee?”
“Hell yes.”
Billy reached for a thermos that Jeffers had placed next to the tray. He tried to pick it up but fumbled the handle. He frowned, and tried again.
“It’s pretty heavy,” Jeffers said. “Why don’t you let me help you with it?”
“I can do it.” Billy tried again, but he couldn’t. Frustrated, he made a growling sound.
“Let the father do it,” Maj said. “He’s had more practice, that’s all.”
“Exactly,” Jeffers said, picking it up and pouring a careful stream of coffee into a white mug. Billy watched the process avidly, still chewing on a pain au chocolat.
The priest glanced at me. “Do you remember John, Billy? He was there in the hospital with you last night.”
Billy looked at me. “Yeah. Maybe.”
Maj was looking at me too. “What’s he doing here now?”
“He’s run into problems with someone we know,” Jeffers said. He held a pot of cream in front of Billy, who nodded enthusiastically. “Which is why he looks like he got pulled through a hedge backward.”
Maj came to look me up and down. Being that close to him made the conversations of last night seem absurd. He was a man in his early thirties, with strong bone structure and stubble across his jawline. His hair was brown, midlength. His eyes were brown too, with a touch of green around the irises. He was there. He took up space. He was substantial, and his presence was strong.
“Yes, you could touch me,” he said, as if he knew what I’d been thinking.
He was also, however, wearing exactly the same outfit as when I’d last glimpsed him. Battered jeans and the untucked shirt. Of course, someone living as he did—however that might precisely be—wouldn’t change their outfit often. The clothes did not look tired, however, as if at the end of several days’ use. There was no hint of sweat. In fact, there was no odor to him at all. We underestimate the importance of that sense, but once you’ve noticed its absence, you keep noticing it.
It made me wonder whether the clothes he was wearing were independent objects in their own right, or if they were just part of the idea of him.
“I’ve heard two different theories that say I shouldn’t be able to touch you.”
“I don’t know what you’ve been told,” Maj said. “Don’t care, either. I’m sorry you’ve run into Reinhart. He’s a bad man. But our world is none of your business. The best thing to do would be to leave.”
“I’ll do that,” I said. “But that doesn’t mean Reinhart’s going to leave me alone. A cop told me last night that Reinhart
tends to finish what he starts. Two days ago he threatened my girlfriend. I don’t like that. And I don’t like that this mess came from you people.”
“No, it didn’t.”
“Yeah, it did. If we hadn’t been trying to find out who was following one of Kristina’s friends, we’d never have even seen your friend Lizzie.”
His eyes narrowed. This felt strangely noticeable, as if I was admiring the realism of a special effect. “Lizzie was following someone?”
“Catherine Warren. Do you know her?”
I don’t know what I’d said, or why it meant something to him, but the man’s whole attitude changed.
“It happens,” Jeffers said quickly. “Look at you and David. You’ve even talked to him.”
“That’s different. And I told her about it,” Maj said. “She didn’t say anything to me about this.”
“It’s just following,” Jeffers said. “Not trying to make contact. I’m sure it’s fine.”
There was a violent coughing sound.
Billy was still at the table, cup of coffee in one hand and yet another pastry in the other. A mouthful of this had gone down the wrong way. He was trying to clear it, hacking up like a cat with a hairball. At first it didn’t seem such a big deal—flakey pastry down the windpipe—but the cough got deeper, wrenching.
“Aren’t you going to do something?” I said. “He’s choking.”
Maj watched. “No, he’s not.”
Billy turned from the table. His eyes were bulging, his face white. Even through his coughing he was still trying to shove some more of the pastry into his mouth.
“It’s too late, Billy,” Jeffers said.
Billy didn’t seem to hear. He raised the coffee to his mouth, chewing manically. The blockage seemed to clear, and he smiled. “Got it,” he said.
As the mug got to his lips, something fell to the floor near his feet. I stared at it. It was brown, damp.
“What the hell is that?”
The others ignored me. I looked closer and saw that it was a mouthful of chewed pastry. Other things were floating down to join it now, flakes, drifting down through the air. Through Billy’s body.
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