The boy smiled oddly. "I call it 'The Octopus.'"
Amelia was having trouble hearing him over the din. She took a couple of steps forward, then stopped. The boy was still fifty feet away. "That's an interesting name for a house. Why do you call it that?"
"Because it reaches out like an octopus does."
"Reaches out?" She was growing apprehensive.
He nodded earnestly. "Like an octopus," he repeated. "You think you're far enough from it and it's not going to get you, but you aren't. It reaches out."
She remembered the way the dark sky in turmoil had seemed to follow them, even though she'd backed away from it, into the blue-green sky and nodding sunflowers.
"Is that what happened to your parents?" she asked.
He nodded. "Uh-huh."
"But you got away from it?"
He smiled oddly again, but said nothing.
"Isn't that what happened?" Amelia asked again.
"He's a creepy little kid," Morgan said, behind her.
"I don't think he's a kid at all," Jack South suggested.
"Tell them to shut up!" the boy demanded.
Amelia took a couple more steps forward, stopped, cocked her head. She could see the boy more clearly now and his paper-white face had an odd look to it, as if his skin were marbled.
"Could you tell me your name?" she asked.
"Tell me yours first."
"Amelia," she said, then glanced at the rest of the group. "And these are my friends—Jack, Morgan and Freely."
"Do you know why I'm here, Amelia?" the boy asked.
"Perhaps you could tell me your name first." She took another couple of steps forward.
The boy said, "My name is Billy, George, Jimmy, Stephen, John."
"That's a lot of names."
"And I made this house, and all the stuff outside too."
"That was very creative of you."
"This stuff inside is all shitty stuff." He moved his hand to indicate the tilt-a-whirls, the trampolines, the swings and teeter-totters. "Who wants this stuff?"
"You don't want it, Billy, George, Jimmy…?"
"My mom and dad made it for me. They wanted a little boy, so they made me. And they wanted a place for me to play, so they made this. But it wasn't what I wanted and they knew it. They didn't care. It didn't matter what I wanted. I wasn't really real. Who cares what little boys who aren't really real want!?"
"You're not real, Jimmy, George, Billy…?"
"You're real," he interrupted. "I can tell. You ask questions all the time. That's what real people do. They ask lots of questions. Like my mom and dad did. 'Why did you make our house look like this? It's awful. Why don't you like the toys we make for you?' Stupid questions. But they're paying for what they tried to do to me, and someday all this stuff will be gone, and they'll be gone too. And I'll be really alone." Another odd smile. Broader. More malicious.
"Is that what you want, Billy, George, John?" Amelia asked. "To be alone?"
He stepped forward, stopped, stepped forward again, stopped. His movements were very stiff, as if he were a windup toy. And as he got closer, Amelia could see that the marbling effect she'd noticed before was real—his skin looked as if it were made of cracked porcelain. "Real people don't want to be alone," he said, smirking. "That's why my mom and dad made me. Because they were all alone."
"I say we take our chances outside," Morgan shouted.
Amelia glanced around at him. He was beginning to turn toward the door. "No," she said. "We can't go back out there. There's no place for us to go."
"And no place for us to stay either," Freely said.
"She's right!" agreed Jack South.
The boy was grinning. His small, dark eyes were like marbles. Suddenly Amelia knew that they couldn't stay here, with this creature.
She turned quickly spread her arms to encompass the group behind her and, en masse, they made their way to the door.
Chapter Thirty-three
The detective unzipped the body bag before it was loaded into the medical examiner's station wagon and said, "Mr. Briggs, is this your wife?"
Harry stared at the woman's face for a long while. At last, he said firmly, "My wife's not dead. She's alive. She's as alive as you or I."
"Could you simply tell me if this is your wife, Mr. Briggs?"
Harry nodded. "Yes, that's Barbara. But she's not dead."
"So, it's all coming back to you, huh, Harry?" said the voice in his head.
The cop unzipped another bag, lying beside Barbara's body, near the heated swimming pool. "And who is this, Mr. Briggs?"
Harry looked. "I know him," he said. "His name was Harry Briggs."
The cop sighed. "That's your name, sir."
"Yes, and that was me, there, under the sheet. I have to tell you that it's very, very disconcerting to see myself that way."
The cop shook his head in frustration. "This man is your brother, right? He's your twin?"
"No, that's not what I said. I said he's me. He has a birthmark on the inside of his right thigh. I do too."
"Mr. Briggs, I can understand that. . . all of this might be a shock for you—"
"Do you know where I come from, Detective?" Harry felt suddenly uncomfortable. His arms tingled. His legs too. And his feet, his hands.
The detective stared bemusedly at him for a moment, then said simply, "No. Tell me."
Harry glanced confusedly at his feet, then, with conviction, at the detective. "I come from the other side. And do you know why I'm here?"
"When you say 'the other side,' Mr. Briggs, what exactly do you…?"
Harry couldn't feel his hands and feet anymore. He looked at his feet again. He lifted his right foot, looked at his heel. He thought he knew what was happening. He said, "I mean heaven, or maybe hell, the afterlife, whatever you wish to call it. That's where I've come from. It should be obvious. That's me there, under the sheet. And that's my wife. That's my temporal body at any rate, and that's my wife's temporal body—"
"Jerry," the detective interrupted, addressing a uniformed cop nearby, "would you please take Mr. Briggs back to the precinct house and call Bellevue—"
Harry, still handcuffed, did a zigzag around the two cops and dove headfirst into the pool.
"If anything's scary about all this," Amelia said, as the huge door to the big, dark house closed behind them, "that's scary."
"What?" Jack South asked.
"The fact that our creations themselves can create—" Amelia began.
"I'll tell you what scares me," Freely cut in. "I can't see the car, I can't see blue sky." A ragged scream erupted from somewhere beyond them. "That scares me!"
"Amelia, I don't understand," Morgan said. "What creations are you talking about?"
"The people of Silver Lake, for instance," she answered. "They're my creations. They're not real people. They're projections."
Another ragged scream rose up from the bleak, windswept landscape.
"Jesus!" Jack South whispered.
Amelia continued, "I wanted a little community filled with pleasant but quirky people, so I created Silver Lake. And I populated it with people like Leonard and Mrs. Alexander and Mrs. Conte and Viola Pennypacker, poor woman—"
"And this boy is one of those people?" Morgan asked.
"He's not one of mine," Amelia answered tersely. "He's obviously something his 'parents' conjured up."
Another scream. "And I'd guess," Freely said, "that that's one of his parents now!"
Amelia nodded. "And they conjured up all those . . . things inside the house too, so their 'little boy' could amuse himself. But when they conjured him up, they didn't realize what a lot of us don't realize—that our creations are not simply products of our conscious selves, they're products of our whole selves, and obviously there was something about them, this boy's parents, that…"
"And he doesn't like what they made for him?" Freely asked. "The swings and teeter-totters."
"Obviously not," Amelia answered. "These
people created a creature of darkness."
"And what do you think that creature wants with us?" Morgan asked.
"Heaven knows," Amelia answered.
"Then there's no one in this place who can tell us a thing," Morgan quipped.
"I ain't staying here," Jack South announced, and began walking away from the house.
"Jack," Amelia called after him, "I don't think we should go anywhere without talking about it first—"
"Then go ahead and talk," he called back. "Talk all you want. I'm sick of talking." He walked faster.
Amelia ran after him, caught him up and grabbed his arm. He carried on walking and she kept pace with him, hand on his arm. "Jack, please, I believe we should all put our heads together about this—"
"Yeah," he cut in, smiling grimly, "and create a four-headed monster!"
Amelia glanced back at Morgan and Freely, who were still standing in front of the door to the dark house. They looked very worried. "Listen, Jack," she said, "if we go much farther, we're going to lose track of our friends. Why don't we just turn around—"
"I'm not a child!" he snapped.
This surprised Amelia. "I didn't realize I was treating you like one."
"Well, you are. And you were. And I don't like it."
"Jack, I'm sorry, I…" She realized that what he was saying was true.
"Just don't do it anymore, okay?"
"Okay."
"And don't try and convince me to go back to that house." He walked faster.
The house was farther away than Amelia thought it should be, and Morgan and Freely were very hard to see. She realized that she had to make a choice—Jack or them.
A scream rose up from the bleak landscape. Amelia looked toward its source and saw a thin, blond woman wearing a soiled, knee-length blue dress standing at the top of a low hill not far away. The woman was looking pleadingly at them, her arms outstretched.
"Jesus H. Christ!" Jack whispered.
The woman opened her mouth very wide, as if she were preparing to eat an apple whole, and screamed again.
"Jesus Fucking Christ!" Jack whispered again.
And the woman was swept away from them, into the dark air, arms still outstretched and mouth still opened wide. In moments, she was gone.
They stared at the spot where the woman had been. "The boy's mom," Amelia said.
"Yeah," said Jack. "His mom."
Amelia looked back. The house was gone.
Morgan and Freely were on their own.
Harry and Sam sat together at the bottom of the deep end of the heated pool and watched as the cops ran about above, pointing flashlights into the water. They could hear what were obviously shouted commands, but no individual words came through the twelve feet of water that separated them from the surface.
"I have to admit that it's good to see you," Harry said.
But Sam couldn't understand him through the water. He waved his hands in front of his face and pointed at his ears. Harry understood the gesture at once. He nodded, stood. "I've never breathed underwater before," he said.
Sam stood beside him and made the same gesture he'd made a moment earlier, to indicate that he couldn't understand what Harry was saying. Harry nodded again.
They walked side by side toward the shallow end. Halfway there, Harry stopped and, moving his lips in an exaggerated way so Sam would understand him, said, 'They're going to see us."
Sam shook his head. "I don't think so."
Harry shrugged. "It doesn't matter anyway," he said.
They continued walking. Feeling the water move, they looked back. Someone in a brown suit had dived in and was frantically searching around the deep end. As they watched, someone else dove in and began looking too. For a moment, the man who had jumped in first looked their way but apparently saw nothing.
Harry grinned. "I feel like a spook!"
Sam tapped him on the shoulder and mouthed, "Did you say something?"
Harry shook his head and together they trudged from the pool.
Sydney awoke hungry, so he left the hotel and walked to a little Greek restaurant on Second Avenue, where he ordered ham and eggs and hashed browns, coffee, orange juice, pancakes and a side order of wheat toast.
The waitress, a thin woman with short brown hair and an eternal smile, explained that they didn't serve breakfast at night. She could get him the toast, she guessed, and the orange juice and coffee, but not the hashed browns, eggs or pancakes.
Sydney looked blankly at her for a minute, as if trying to understand what she'd told him, and when she began to explain it again—"I'm sorry, sir, but there's nothing I can do. . ."—he reached up from where he was sitting, grabbed her by the throat, growled, "That is unacceptable," and crushed her larynx.
She fell with a soft thud to the black and white tile floor and lay, trembling, on her back, mouth and eyes open, her order pad still clutched in her hand.
Several of the other diners saw all of this but stayed in their seats. One of them, a boy of fourteen, got the overwhelming urge to press a button and see the whole fascinating sequence of events again.
The owner of the restaurant, a short, stocky man with curly black hair, went for Sydney, who was still seated, with a fire extinguisher, the only weapon within easy reach.
"Our only hope is to keep walking," Amelia said.
"But it's so damned cold," Jack South protested. "And it ain't getting no warmer either."
"Tell me about it." She was hugging herself for warmth.
Snow began to fall on the bleak landscape.
"Jesus, snow!" Jack whispered.
It fell straight down because the air was so still. "I'll bet it's ten degrees," Jack grumbled.
"Uh-huh," Amelia said.
"But since there's no wind," Jack added, "it feels like thirty." He forced a chuckle.
"Sorry?" Amelia said.
"Don't you get it? There's no wind, so it feels warmer."
She looked quizzically at him.
"Don't you remember," he explained, and began to walk faster, because the snow had started falling more heavily, "the weathermen were always saying things like, 'Well, it's five above, but with a fifteen-mile-an-hour wind, it feels like twenty below'?"
Amelia sighed. "Sure, I get it."
The snowflakes became as large as turtle shells.
"No wind," Amelia murmured.
"Yeah, no wind, so it feels like—"
"Shhh! I'm thinking."
Jack began to run.
"Goddammit!" she whispered, and ran after him. She easily caught up with him and grabbed his shoulder. He stopped running. "I didn't mean to offend you," she said.
"You didn't. I just figured I'd be warmer if I ran."
"Oh," she replied, and realized that he was right. "Well then, let's run."
It wasn't easy. The ground was pockmarked with exposed roots and irregularly shaped depressions. Jack fell twice, but quickly scrambled to his feet with Amelia's help.
"Where are we running to?" he asked as they ran.
"We're not running to anything," she told him. "We're running from."
"Are you sure?" he asked.
"No."
"And what about Morgan and Freely?"
"They'll have to fend for themselves, I'm afraid." The snow stopped falling abruptly, asif it had been switched off.
The snow that had fallen was melting quickly. The air was growing warmer.
"Shit," Amelia said, "now he's going to try and cook us."
"That little kid, you mean?"
She nodded.
"You think he's doing all this?"
"Jack, get with the program. Of course he's doing it. It's his little space. Just like Silver Lake is my space and that ... bunker is Conrad's space."
"And you really think that kid is changing the weather? You think he made it snow?"
"Within his own space, which this is, sure."
"Could you do it in your space?"
She thought about this and shook her head.
"No. I couldn't. I tried, but I couldn't."
"The weather was just the weather, right? Like it always is."
"Yes, that's true," she said pointedly.
The temperature had risen into the sixties. It felt good.
"So what are you driving at, Jack?"
He shrugged. "I don't know what I'm driving at. I just think you think too much. Maybe you should stop thinking and just stop thinking." He grinned.
Amelia sighed. Sometimes the observations of fools were simply that—foolish observations. She grimaced at the idea, suddenly disliking herself for it.
She nodded, "Yes, I know what you mean," she said, then realized that she sounded insincere.
Jack nodded glumly. "Sure you do," he said.
The temperature had climbed well into the seventies now. It still felt good, but neither Jack nor Amelia could enjoy it because it was rising so rapidly.
"It's almost like he wanted us to stop running," Jack said.
"I thought we agreed that the ... little boy wasn't responsible for this?" Amelia said.
A flash of blue-green appeared at the close horizon. Then it was gone.
"The Octopus," Amelia whispered.
"Yeah," Jack agreed. "The Octopus. Reaching out."
"And reaching back."
Then, despite the rising temperature, they started to run again.
"One question," Harry said.
"Shoot."
Harry and Sam were walking side by side on an expressway that led from Chappaqua to the George Washington Bridge, and then to Manhattan. They were staying well on the shoulder, but traffic was whizzing by within inches. It was 10:30 P.M. and they'd been walking for an hour and a half.
"Actually, two questions," Harry corrected. "Maybe more."
"Shoot," Sam repeated.
"Why are we walking?"
"To get to where we're going, I think," Sam answered.
"No, you don't understand. We're dead, right? I mean, we're spooks, spirits, ghosts, shades."
"Yes."
"Then why are we walking? Shouldn't we be able to . . . I don't know, fly? Levitate? Wish ourselves into being wherever we want to be?"
Sam shrugged. "If we could we would."
"Maybe we can."
Sam shook his head. "I can't. I've tried. I get plooped, sure, but that's not me doing it. It's someone else doing it."
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