House of Bones: A Novel

by Dale Bailey

  It was all right there before him. It was all inside of him.

  He needed no light. Last night, he had not stumbled. He would not stumble now.

  He drew in a breath permeated with the damp odor of stone, the ripe earthy stench, faintly organic, of pools where sunlight never falls, and then, like a man diving from a pier to strike off swimming into unguessed ocean depths, he stepped away from the wall and started toward the stairs.

  9

  “The truth is,” Abel said over sandwiches, “I’m not sleeping so well.”

  Lara watched him over the table. He spoke like a man picking his way across a minefield, choosing each word carefully, fearful that it might blow up in his face.

  “Dreamland,” he said. He shook his head. “Appropriate name, huh?”

  “You having bad dreams, Abel?”

  “Yeah. When I sleep at all.”

  She took a bite, chewed thoughtfully.

  Abel swallowed and pushed the plate aside. He’d eaten maybe a third of the sandwich. A glass of seltzer water sat untouched before him. “Any chance you can give me something? To sleep, I mean?”

  “I know what you mean.”

  “So can you?”

  “I can. Will I, though? That’s the question you ought to be asking.”

  “It’s just for a few days, until we get out of this place.”

  “Why don’t you leave now?”

  He turned the water glass in its ring of moisture, releasing a trail of pent-up bubbles. She watched them buoy weightlessly to the surface, released from whatever chemical bondage had held them there, imprisoned in the water.

  She looked up at Abel. “Really,” she said. “Have you given any thought to what I said last night? To leaving?”

  “Why don’t you leave?” he asked. “What’s keeping you here?”

  She said nothing.

  “Well?” he said. “I take it you didn’t just voluntarily surrender your residency, right? You must have a reason.”

  “It’s my reason,” she said.

  He gave her a moment of barbed silence, and then he said, “I bet Lomax knows it.”

  She took a bite of her sandwich, chewing deliberately.

  “You don’t have to tell me,” he said. “It doesn’t matter what it is. The point is, it’s something. That’s the kind of man he is, our benefactor. He’s got something on every one of us, some kind of hold. Otherwise we wouldn’t be here.”

  She spoke without quite realizing she was going to: “Only if we let him.”

  “What?”

  “He only has something on us if we let him have it. Look, Abel, you can walk away from this. There’s nothing to keep you here. You’re young, you’ve got plenty of money—”

  “It’s not about money.”

  “What’s it about then?”

  “My show was canceled.”

  “So?”

  “Lomax has connections. He—” Abel threw up his hands in frustration. “Nothing. Forget it.”

  “You think he’s going to get you a new show, or something?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Why? Why would he?”

  He leaned toward her, his voice rising. “You don’t understand what I do, do you? You don’t understand how much people need it. If I can figure out what he wants, what it is he needs to hear—”

  He broke off abruptly, realizing perhaps that he had gone too far.

  “Then you’re the one who has the power, right?” she said. He smiled weakly, starting to protest, but she cut him off, her voice cold: “You’re a fraud, Abel, you’re a—”

  “Do you really believe that, Lara?”

  She bit her lip.

  He laughed humorlessly. He propped his elbows on the table and massaged his temples, his cuff slipping back to expose the watch strapped around his wrist, the cracked crystal and the black gunk underneath. It made her think of his water glass for some reason, pent-up bubbles shaking off the weight that pinned them down. It made her think of the locket.

  It made her think of Lana.

  Abel’s thoughts must have been moving in the same direction. “This is about yesterday, isn’t it? About your sister?”

  And now she felt it, the resentment that had eluded her last night on the roof. Her voice was cool. “I don’t appreciate being toyed with, Abel.”

  “I didn’t toy with you.”

  “Oh, come on. Ben explained the whole thing to me. I’m not stupid.”

  “No, Lara. I’m telling you, I didn’t—” He pounded his fist on the table. “Listen to me!” He hesitated, and when he spoke again his voice had a renewed urgency. “Listen, something happened last night, and you know it did. Do you think I faked passing out? Do you?”

  She mulled it over, the pallor, his pulse pounding underneath her fingers. And something else: how cold it had gotten, and how quickly. Just thinking about it, she could almost feel it once again, that cold. She studied her plate—a crust of wheat bread, a handful of chips—and pushed it suddenly away. She licked her lips.

  “What about … you know, upstairs?”

  “In the infirmary?”

  She nodded.

  “It was real, Lara.”

  “Then you should leave.” She looked up; she met his eyes. “Abel, you should leave.”

  “Maybe we should all leave, Lara. Have you thought of that?”

  She looked away.

  “See? You can’t do it either,” he said. “He’s got something over you. I don’t know what it is—”

  “I’m surprised you can’t just pluck it out of the air—” she said, trying to derail him, but he went on unperturbed, not even breaking the rhythm of his sentence, his voice strangely gentle, saying, “—but he’s got something over all of us. None of us are going anywhere.”

  “It’s not worth it,” she said abruptly, ignoring the truth of the insight. “Don’t you see? What if you did get another show? How long would it last? Three years? Four? It’s not worth it.”

  “It’s more than that,” he said. “After yesterday, after what happened—I have to know, Lara.”

  In the pause that followed, the kitchen seemed glaring and overbright, Dreamland too silent. There was something brooding and observant in the stillness, something hateful and aware. For crazy as it all sounded, she hadn’t exactly enjoyed a good night’s sleep last night either, had she? She, too, had dreamed—of a man with bloody hands who was and was not Fletcher Keel, of a girl who might have been her sister.

  She met Abel’s appraising eyes. “What do you have in mind?”

  “I want to do another reading.”

  “And if you collapse again?”

  “You’ll take care of it.”

  “Look, Abel, you need to understand: I’m not that well equipped here. I don’t understand what happened yesterday. If there’s a problem—a serious medical problem—”

  “I understand the risks.”

  “Do you? Because I’m not sure you—”

  “I just need to get some sleep first, Lara. A good night’s sleep.”

  She hesitated, words dying on her tongue, marveling at how neatly he had closed this little conversational circle, trapping her inside. Almost against her will, he had engaged her in a negotiation. Almost, Lana whispered mockingly, and Lara cringed. For when it came right down to it, who was manipulating whom? When it came right down to it, she wanted a second reading just as badly as he did, for a part of her—the part that had registered that abrupt drop in temperature, the part that had felt a surge of hope when Abel Williams had described her sister’s illness—wasn’t entirely convinced by Ben’s easy logic. A part of her wasn’t convinced at all.

  That was the part of her that spoke now, summoning up a memory of her parents. She must have been eleven then, maybe twelve, Lana gone but not forgotten, just the three of them, ill at ease on the molded plastic chairs in an auto dealer’s cubicle back home in Wilmington. The salesman had stepped out to confer with his manager. Her mother, meanwhile, agonized: it
was a few hundred dollars, why not just take the price and be done with it? Her father drew himself up in his chair: When you’re negotiating, Penny, he said, you negotiate.

  So negotiate, Lana said.

  Lara swallowed, lifting her fingers to touch the locket under her shirt. It hung there like a stone. “Tomorrow, is that what you have in mind?”

  “In the afternoon. I was thinking—”

  “You’ll eat something tonight? A full meal?”

  “Jeez, La—”

  “I’m serious, Abel. If you want to understand this—if there’s anything to understand—we have to rule that out.”

  He lifted his hands. “Sure. Okay.”

  “And something else.”

  “What?”

  “If anything happens tomorrow during the reading—anything, Abel—you’re done.”

  “What do you mean, done?”

  “You’re out of here. Finis. Kaput. You’re off to the hospital for a full round of diagnostics.”

  “Come on, Lara—”

  “Pleasant dreams, Abel.” She put her hands flat on the table and started to push herself to her feet.

  “Fine,” he said. “Whatever. Just sit down, for Christ’s sake.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “Okay. All right. I’m serious, too.”

  “Really?”

  He took a breath. “Really.”

  She lowered herself back into her seat. Wind rattled the windows. Abel reached out to reclaim his plate, picked up his sandwich, and started to eat.

  10

  He was there before Lara knew he was there, a reflection in the screen before her, a featureless shadow under lines of scrolling text. She jumped, turning in her seat to face him. He hovered in the doorway of the infirmary, reminding her of—

  —his clothes his blood-spattered clothes—

  —that evening in the gym, how creeped-out she’d been when she looked up to see his face floating in the glossy mirror of the window, five stories up, his gaze fixed upon her as she ran.

  “Jesus, Fletcher, you’ve got to stop sneaking up on me like that!” she said, the words out before she could stop them, registering in a fleeting instant the look on his face, how remote it was, how inward-turned and private, like the face of an autistic child or a catatonic, someone only halfway in the world.

  “Doc,” he said, and it was gone, that expression; it might never have been there at all. He grinned sheepishly. “Oh, hey, sorry, Doc. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  Barefoot and disheveled, he paused just inside the door to look her over. She had to suppress the impulse to fold her arms across her breasts.

  “No, it’s fine,” she said. “You okay?”

  “Yeah, I was just, you know—” He waved a hand vaguely. “—passing by. I saw you in here. Thought I’d say hello.”

  “Hi.”

  “Hey.”

  He laughed too loudly. He looked weary, his face drawn and pale, his eyes bloodshot. Everything about him seemed slightly rumpled, his hair matted, his clothes wrinkled, his feet—

  She drew a breath.

  His feet were more than dirty; they were filthy: dark crescents rimming the nails, streaks of grime thickening to crud in the crevices between his toes, a single bright patch of flesh, unsoiled, high on the inner arch of his left foot, startling by contrast. There was something disturbing about it—not the feet themselves, she had seen dirty feet before, but his blithe unawareness of them. What was he doing wandering the hall like that? Why hadn’t he cleaned himself up? And—perhaps the most interesting question of all—how had they gotten that way in the first place?

  Try not to be dense, Lars, Lana said. You know how they got that way.

  And she did, didn’t she? He’d been roaming the corridors of Dreamland, barefoot and alone—this despite the debris they’d seen everywhere on their little tour the other day, despite the broken glass, the crumbling shards of masonry, the occasional discarded needle (one thing you learned in the ER, you learned to watch out for sharps); despite, most of all, Lomax’s oft-repeated warning about wandering off alone.

  He was saying something, she’d missed it.

  She looked up. “What?”

  “I asked what you were doing.”

  “Oh.” She glanced back at the computer. “Oh, that. I’m reading up on something.”

  He stood there, an expectant look on his face.

  “For Abel,” she said, flustered. “You know, yesterday in the lobby. I just wanted to make sure I’m not missing something.”

  “Right. That makes sense.”

  In the breathless moment that followed, both of them at a loss for words, she had to resist the urge to stare at his feet. Outside, the wind suddenly picked up, swirling noisily between the outstretched wings of the building.

  Keel smiled. “Well,” he said. “I’m off. See you around, I guess.”

  He was gone before she could answer, moving off in the direction of his suite. She turned back to the screen, reached for the mouse—and then, before she had quite figured out she was going to do it, she stood and followed him into the hall. He was halfway to his door, striding purposefully down the corridor, his bare feet hushed against the deep-piled carpet, before she caught up with him.

  “Fletcher.”

  He turned, waiting.

  “Are you sure you’re all right?”

  He hesitated—the briefest moment of indecision, she could see it in his eyes—and then he said, “Yeah. I’m fine. Really. Why?”

  Because you look like hell, she wanted to say. Because everything seems crazy and out of control and something about the look on your face when you came into the infirmary took me by surprise and because your feet, for Christ’s sake look at your feet. Yes, and one other reason. Because I’m afraid.

  She stood very still, listening to this simple truth resonate within her.

  “Doc?”

  “I just wondered. You look a little tired, that’s all. Are you sleeping okay?”

  “Yeah. Yeah, I’m okay. I slept good last night.”

  “Good.” She held his gaze. “If you have any problem …”

  “Right. You bet.”

  “Okay, then.” She nodded, and started back toward the infirmary. She had only gone two or three steps when he spoke again, his voice tentative.

  “Hey. Lara?”

  Her name in his mouth—her given name, not the faintly mocking title he had always previously employed—stopped her cold. She turned back to look at him—his face riven, his shoulders hunched, his big hands flexing at his sides—and she saw suddenly what she should have seen from the first, back there in the infirmary: he too was afraid. Something had happened to him out there in the desolate corridors of Dreamland and it had frightened him. Badly.

  “What is it?” she said.

  He cleared his throat. “Last night,” he said. “Last night, were—did you—”

  “What? What is it?”

  He looked stricken, his eyes wide.

  “Nothing. Never mind, it’s nothing,” he said.

  She reached out to him, but he lifted his hands as if to hold her at bay. He backed up a step or two, his mouth working soundlessly, and then he turned away.

  “Fletcher—” she called after him.

  But he didn’t look back.

  11

  His portentous second self—if that’s what it was—had vanished.

  Exhausted, empty anyway of words, Ben sat back, only half aware of the music issuing from the CD player—a muted piano melody, interlaced with a deceptively simple acoustic guitar line—and scrolled slowly through the afternoon’s work: a rough account of Abel’s reading in the lobby, the chaos afterward. He’d tried to get it all down—sights, sounds, scents, the rhythms of the conversation itself—as accurately as he could, from the abandoned hand of gin to the tense moments in the elevator, Abel still dazed, leaning wearily against the rear wall as they made their slow ascent. There were no interruptions, no subliminal forebodin
gs imbedded in the rhythms of his prose.

  Yet something there nagged at him, some connection he couldn’t quite put his finger on, something someone had said. He had a good memory for that kind of thing—the importance of accurate quotes had been drummed into his head in graduate school, and he’d made a discipline of it in his working life. He’d never used a tape recorder, both because he didn’t want to hassle with the technology—carrying spare batteries and cassettes, fussing with the mike, making transcripts—and because he didn’t want to rely on it. Tapes failed, recorders had things spilled on them, but the story kept happening. The story didn’t care. So he had cultivated the habits of listening and observing, of recollecting events with accuracy.

  He had it right, he was almost sure of that. But why did it matter?

  Ben stood, stretching, and moved to the window. Daylight had faded, a smoky twilight under a lid of oppressive cloud. Lights winked in the distance, faint and faraway, like candles ringing the black desolation of wasted blocks surrounding Tower Three.

  He’d been at it for hours, and he felt the weariness as a tension in his shoulders and lower back. He was hungry, too. He could knock on Lara’s door, see if she wanted to tag along …

  He closed the curtains and turned away, the idea evaporating half-formed.

  He switched out CDs, putting on Mingus, something to get the blood moving, wake up his brain. Then he sat down in front of the computer, and started scrolling through the day’s work again, line by line. It was here somewhere, he knew it was. But where?

  12

  Keel closed his eyes and lifted his face to the relentless pulse of the shower, welcoming the sting against his skin, and still he felt it, the tidal pull of memory.

  That sense of presence stirring in the south stairwell.

  That reed-thin voice inside his head. The sexless voice. The voice of many voices that could always, if only for a time, be anything, anything at all. Anything you wanted it to be.

  “No,” he whispered into the thrumming cascade. “No—”

  And then he was there, God help him he was there, he was—