The dream shifted and she was in Edmund's bedroom.
She stands at the foot of the bed, staring at Edmund, whose pale face barely juts above the blankets. His eyes are closed and next to him on the bed lies The Demonolatria. Something the doctor told her comes to mind and she looks at the pill bottle in her hand. He d told her that Edmund's heart problem was congenital, and that since they were twins, she probably had it, too.
"Running out of time," Edmund croaks from the bed. It is early October of last year and he has been planning for Samhain all year. Now his eyes are bloodshot slits and his lips barely move when he talks. "I've got to perform the Rituals of Preparation, Eleanor. You've got to help me."
"Yes, Edmund," she says soothingly and looks at the pill bottle again. She slips them in her dress pocket and goes to his side. "I'll help you, Edmund, but first you need your rest."
When Edmund has succumbed to the morphine and sleeps, disconnected from the Machine and unable to hear her thoughts any longer Eleanor leaves the room and returns to her bedroom. Under the mattress she hides the nitroglycerin pills and lies on the bed. Several hours later, and after much concentration by Eleanor, Edmund wakens in pain and calls to Eleanor to bring him his pills.
Eleanor lies in the darkness, listening to his voice grow fainter; and his mind grow dimmer until both stop altogether.
CHAPTER 36
For want of a nail, the shoe was lost ...
Eight of the thirteen children in the cage had dropped off to sleep, empty glasses stained with milky residue by their sides, or still clutched in their hands. Add to that the boy with the gash on his head, and the boy who had just told them of the stew and milk and who now had relapsed into unconsciousness, and only Mark, Jackie, and Jeff West were left awake. Since Jeff had already drunk half of his glass of milk, he too was nodding. Though he was putting up a valiant effort to stay awake, within minutes of the others, he, too, keeled over, lying on top of his sleeping brother and joining him and the others in slumber.
The drugged milk had had a domino effect on the boys who'd drunk it. At first, after hearing Davy Torrez's utterances and seeing the truth of what he'd said in the amputated, cooked finger end on the floor, they had all sat in horrified, incredulous silence. Mark had been the first to react, crawling to the stinking filthy toilet and jamming his fingers down his throat in an attempt to make himself puke. He was only partly successful, spitting up a little of the stew, but not much. Some of the others had followed his lead but most of them were already starting to topple over into slumber. First one slumped over, then another, and another, falling into each other and collapsing in a rough line.
Jackie and Mark sat alone in the cage, watching the sleeping boys, and found themselves almost wishing that they, too, had drunk the drugged milk. At least then this nightmare would be over.
Mark and, in a less articulate way, Jackie, felt as though reality had been nudged. Mark visualized it as reality being this big box set up on a table. Somebody-or something, he couldn't even be sure that the old lady was human anymorehad just bumped into the table and moved the box. It was not a pleasant feeling.
If this crazy old woman was eating children, then suddenly anything was possible. What had previously been a scary and dangerous situation had just become something out of a horror film or a nightmare. But even the scariest, grossest horror film or the worst nightmare couldn't even begin to compare to this because, like it or not, this was for real, for keeps, for life or death.
The severed finger on the floor mesmerized Jackie until he could stand looking at it no more. He pulled off his sweater, one his mother had knitted for him, and threw it over the finger. Getting on his knees, he made the sign of the cross and clasped his hands beseechingly towards the ceiling. "In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Please God, get us out of here. I promise I'll be good. I'll never be bad again. I'll never fight with Jen. I won't bug my mother ..." He burst into tears at the mention of his mother and was unable to continue his prayer. He curled up, hugging his legs to his chest and pleading softly, "Please ... please .. ."
Mark wiped tears from his own eyes and got up. He began pacing back and forth in the small clear area in front of the bars, racking his brain for some way out of this mess. As he walked, he kept staring at Jackie's sweater on the floor. Suddenly he had an idea. He went to the right wall of the cage and looked through the bars at the keys hanging on the wall. He estimated that they were ten feet away. He took off his belt, then his shirt, and looped the one sleeve left on it through the buckle and tied it with a bulky knot.
"Give me your shirt," Mark whispered to Jackie. He was shivering slightly and goosebumps had risen on his bare chest and arms.
Jackie stopped crying and looked at the half-naked Mark as though he were crazy.
"Come on. Give me your shirt. And get the shirts and sweaters off the other kids so I can tie them together. Maybe I can hook the keys and get them and we can get out of here," Mark explained hurriedly as he began removing Jeff's shirt.
Jackie looked at the keys on the wall, then at Mark tying Jeff's shirt to his, making a clumsy rope, and saw a glimmer of hope, maybe even an answer to his prayer. He immediately took off his shirt and gave it to Mark. He started to take off his undershirt also, but Mark stopped him.
"Help me get the shirts and sweaters off the others first," Mark told him. "That should be enough"
They worked quickly; thoughts of the old woman returning too soon urging them on. When they had removed five shirts-none of the boys other than Mark wore belts-Mark started spinning them tight, the way he would a wet towel to slap someone with, then tied them to the makeshift line.
Eagerly, Jackie continued removing clothes from the sleeping boys, all except for the boy with the cut head and Davy Torrez, whose pajama top was caked with dirt and dried vomit, and piled them next to Mark. Five of the nine boys, besides Mark, wore long-sleeved shirts and sweaters, which Mark tied sleeve to sleeve. Other than Davy Torrez, Jason Grakopolous was the only boy wearing pajamas, the top of which was also long-sleeved. The twins wore sweaters over short-sleeved soccer shirts.
A pile of laundry lay at Mark's feet by the time he tied the last shirt on. "Go to the other side and listen for her coming back," he directed Jackie, who immediately did as he was told. He stood with his head turned, his ear toward the door listening, but also watching Mark's attempts at the key ring.
First, Mark wound all the clothes up into a bunched coil in his hand, then pushed his arms through the bars as far as they would go. Holding the end of the shirt rope in his left hand and the coil in his right, he swung the latter a few times to build momentum and let it fly. It went a few dismal feet; the coil of shirts never unwound.
Mark hauled the shirts in again, winding them looser this time. Again he swung them: 1, 2, 3-he let them go. The shirt uncoiled this time and the line reached the wall but it was way off target to the left of the key ring. He reeled the clothes line in for another attempt and tried to stay calm and patient.
With each throw Jackie's heart surged and he felt a jolt of hopeful excitement. With each miss he sagged against the bars, expelling air and wincing as the dagger of dread in his stomach cut a little bit deeper.
Mark continued his attempts at the ring for hours. Several times he had to stop when Jackie thought he heard something. They both listened intently each time to every sound in the house above them. When he'd satisfied himself that the old woman wasn't coming back, Mark returned to casting his line, and patiently reeling it in.
Though he kept at it faithfully, he began to see that it was useless. He should have seen it sooner, but it had felt so good to have hope, to have a plan, to have a chance, that he had ignored the obvious: The keys were on a large metal ring that was hung on a thick nail driven at an upward slant into the wooden support beam along the wall making it nearly impossible to get the ring off the nail with the sleeve of a shirt or sweater as he was trying to do.
Useless, or not, Mark k
ept trying, partly to keep Jackie's hopes alive so he wouldn't cry, and partly because he didn't want to give up his own hope without making the best attempt that he could. After an hour, the line became heavier, and after several his arms felt like stone. He struggled on for another hour, numbly throwing the line out and reeling it in without even thinking about what he was doing, then he had to stop and rest.
"Let me try for a while," Jackie said, coming over and kneeling next to Mark who sat slumped against the bars.
Mark, at first, shook his head no, then reconsidered. It would give Jackie something to do. He handed Jackie the clothes rope, but after half an hour, Jackie too gave up. None of his throws had gone very far.
"You can try it again after you rest, huh Mark?" Jackie asked hopefully, sitting cross-legged next to the older boy.
Mark shrugged, but couldn't bring himself to tell Jackie that it was hopeless. If he did, the kid would lose it and start bawling again. If that happened, Mark knew he wouldn't be able to control himself and would follow suit. And they were never going to get out of this unless he could stay in control and think.
Every problem has a solution, his father always said. The trick is to remain calm and patient and think through all of your options. In this case, though, that way led to trouble because one of the options was surely a nasty death after which they would be chopped up for stew.
Mark shrugged into a slouched position with his chin resting on his chest and pulled the pile of clothes over his chilly, naked chest. The only outcomes to this situation that he could see, other than the one he didn't want to even think about, were: someone would rescue them; the old woman would have another attack and die; or somehow they could attack her and escape the next time she opened the cage door.
Thinking out loud, Mark explored the chances of being able to attack the old woman. They had no weapons, but Mark figured that if he or Jackie could somehow hide behind the door, they could slam the door bars on her head when she came through and maybe knock her unconscious.
It sounded like a dangerous plan to Jackie, and Mark knew it was a long shot. There was nowhere for either of them to hide behind the door without being seen. Still, talking about it and planning diversions helped them both pass the time for a while.
Sometime in mid-afternoon, Mark and Jackie dozed for about an hour. They woke hungry, but the memory of the stew and a rising stench in the room like bad farts and boiled cabbage that came from Jackie's ripening stepfather turned their stomachs and killed their hunger quickly.
Several times Steve's corpse made hissing and gurgling sounds and once, actually burped. Mark and Jackie both giggled nervously at first, each thinking the other had done it, until they realized the truth when they smelled the foul wave of air that washed over them from the body's direction. Their smiles quickly disappeared.
"Maybe you should try to hook the key again," Jackie offered when the room began to lose the light. "It'll be dark soon"
Mark didn't answer for a moment, but then shrugged off the pile of clothes and got up. "Sure, what the hell. I haven't got anything better to do" As he got up, his foot kicked a spoon and another idea popped into his head. Picking up the spoon, he bent it and pushed the handle through the loose knitting of the sleeve of a sweater at the end of the clothes rope. It wasn't real secure, but it just might be enough to hook the key ring and slide it off the nail, Mark figured. With renewed hope he began tossing the line, with the spoon hook on the end, at the key ring again.
On his thirteenth try (he was keeping count to break the monotony) the sleeve of the sweater got caught on the nail. "Damn!" Mark swore. He had just missed getting the spoon through the key ring. Now the sweater was stuck, the nail poking right through the fabric. To make matters worse, as he tugged on the line, trying to free the sweater, the spoon slipped out of the sleeve and fell, clattering, to the floor. "Double damn!"
Mark was getting scared now. If he couldn't get the sleeve off the nail and the old lady came back, she'd know what he had been up to and he might become stew a lot sooner than he thought. In desperation, he began tugging forcefully on the sweater with all his might. With a ripping, squeaking sound the sweater came free of the nail at the same moment that the nail came free of the wooden beam. The key ring fell to the floor, bounced off dead Mr. Nailer's ear, and landed next to his head.
"You did it!" Jackie nearly shouted, trying not to look at Steve.
"Shhh!" Mark hushed. "I haven't got it yet. You're going to give us away." Though he chastised Jackie, Mark was just as excited. He couldn't believe he had actually knocked the keys from the wall. Now he had to calm down and figure out some way to get the keys within reach of the cage.
He pulled the clothes in and threw them again. After a couple of tries that landed on Mr. Nailer's discolored face, Mark got the end sweater on the keys and tried to drag them across the floor. The sweater wasn't heavy enough to pull the ring along and slipped off it as soon as he tugged on it. He realized he needed something heavier that would sit on the keys and drag them along.
Mark looked around the cage for something heavy enough. The stew pot was too big and heavy to fit through the bars; the spoons they had eaten the stew with were too light. He kicked one of the spoons with his sneaker. His sneaker! That was it! Perfect! His sneaker would definitely be heavy enough. He sat down and untied his sneaker, a size 9 Converse Larry Bird All-Star basketball shoe, and slipped it off. He tied the laces to the sleeve of the sweater at the end of his makeshift rope and stood for another try.
The sun was setting, throwing the room into dusky shadows. Mark could just make out the keys on the floor next to Mr. Nailer's head, whose eyes were open, staring forever at the floor. Mark cursed himself for wasting so much time doing nothing when it had been light in the room, but that couldn't be helped now.
Mark coiled the line, liking the heavy feel of his sneaker on the end and gave it a good toss. He overshot the keys. The sneaker hit the wall and fell, bouncing off Mr. Nailer's body, which squished a little when jostled. Mark pulled the line in quickly and tried again. This time his sneaker landed hard on Mr. Nailer's face. Mark pulled it off quickly, revealing a large, purple bruise in the soft, ripe flesh of Mr. Nailer's cheekbone. Miraculously, the sneaker landed right on the key ring when it fell off his former teacher's face.
Mark began pulling the line in slowly and could hear the keys scraping along the stone floor as they slid toward him. In a sudden surge of excitement, he pulled the sneaker in faster, and lost the keys.
"Don't go so fast!" Jackie cried harshly. He had resumed his lookout station at the front of the cage.
"Shut up!" Mark shouted back. He wrapped the shirts up again and tossed the sneaker.
"Bull's-eye!" Jackie cheered five tries later, his voice threatening to become louder than a whisper. With a loud kachink! the sneaker had landed on the key ring.
"Shut up, I said," Mark whispered nervously. Moving as slowly and steadily as possible, Mark began to pull the sneaker back, and heard again the scrape of the keys on the stone floor. Four feet later the scraping stopped, the sneaker pulled free, leaving the key ring behind. But they were halfway. A couple more tries and he would have it.
Two hours later, he was still trying. Now that the keys were closer, instead of becoming easier to hit, they became impossible. The room grew steadily darker, and Mark grew anxious, rushing his shots. Soon he couldn't see the key ring at all and had to throw blind at where he guessed he remembered it to be lying. He hit it once, but the key ring got pushed away and he lost it completely.
For the next hour, no matter where he threw the sweater, he came up empty. Eventually it got so dark that he could barely see his hand in front of his face. Hope of snagging the keys began to fade.
As the night wore on, the heavy, drugged breathing of the other boys seemed louder in the darkness and made Jackie nervous. He was so scared of the dark that they seemed to drown out all other noises except for the clop! and drag of the sneaker across the floor as Mark s
earched for the key ring. The two together were so loud that Jackie couldn't tell if he heard the witch coming back or not.
Another hour passed while Mark searched in vain for the key ring. Suddenly, Jackie thought he heard a creaking sound from the ceiling. At the same moment Mark let out an excited gasp of joy. Jackie forgot all about the noise or keeping watch and scrabbled across the cage to Mark's side.
"I've got it," Mark exclaimed through clenched teeth, resting his head against the bars for a moment. "I didn't even know I had them until I started pulling the sneaker in. I almost lost them"
He giggled nervously and took a deep breath. Getting down on his knees, he began to pull the line in slowly and again heard the sweet sound of the keys moving across the floor. With only a sweater left to go, he lost them again. He quickly dropped to his stomach and reached both hands through the bars as he groped the dark floor for the keys.
Jackie followed Mark's example and helped him.
"Damn it," Mark swore softly. He couldn't find them. They had sounded so close, but he couldn't find them anywhere within the area of his reach. He must have been mistaken about where he'd heard them stop. He pulled his hand in to try the sneaker again, when his fingers brushed against the keys. They were lying right up against the base of the cage. He grabbed them and pulled them in.
"You got them!" Jackie cried, so excited he forgot to be quiet. He listened to the sound of the key ring jingling in the dark and thought it was the best sound he had ever heard.
"Yeah," Mark said, breathless with excitement. Getting up quickly, he felt for his sneaker, untied it, and put it back on. In the dark he couldn't remember which shirt on the rope was his so he left it and slid along the bars until he reached the cage door.
"What about the others?" Jackie asked, following Mark to the door. He was sticking close to the older boy in the dark, keeping a hand touching his arm at all times.
Grimm Memorials Page 30