Phil threw back his head and let out an animal
sound. It wasn't human. It was a howl.
"You killed her!" He tumbled off the bed and
lurched toward James. "You said she was just going
to sleep, but you killed herl She's dead!"
James didn't back away from the attack. Instead,
he grabbed Phil and dragged him out into
the
hallway.
"Hearing is the last sense to go," he snarled in
Phillip's ear. "She may be able to
hear you."
Phil wrenched free and ran toward the living room. He didn't know what he was doing, he only knew that he needed to destroy things. Poppy was
dead. She was gone. He grabbed the couch and
flipped it over, then kicked the coffee table over, too. He snatched up a lamp, yanked its cord out of the
socket, and threw it toward the fireplace.
"Stop it!" James shouted over the crash. Phil saw
him and ran at him. The sheer force of his charge knocked James backward into the wall. They fell to
the floor together in a heap.
"You-killed her!" Phil gasped, trying to get his
hands around James's throat.
Silver.
James's eyes blazed like the molten metal.
He grabbed Phil's wrists in a painful grip.
"Stop it
now,
Phillip," he hissed.
Something about the way he said it made Phil stop.
Almost sobbing, he struggled to get air into his lungs.
"I'll kill
you
if I have to, to keep Poppy safe," James
said, his voice still savage and menacing. "And she's
only safe if you stop this and do exactly what I tell you
to.
Exactly
what I tell you. Understand?" He shook Phil
hard, nearly banging Phil's head into the wall.
Strangely enough, it was the right thing to say.
James was saying he cared about Poppy. And weird
as it might sound, Phil had come to trust James to
tell the truth.
The raging red insanity in Phil's brain died away.
He took a long breath.
"Okay. I understand," he said hoarsely. He was used to being in charge-both of himself and of other
people. He didn't like James giving him orders. But
in this case there was no help for it. "But-she is
dead, isn't she?"
"It depends on your definition," James said, letting
go and slowly pushing himself off the floor. He
scanned the living room, his mouth grim. "Nothing
went wrong, Phil. Everything went just the way it
was supposed to-except for this. I was going to let
your parents come back and find her, but we don't
have that option now. There isn't any way to explain
this mess, except the.truth."
"The truth being?"
"That you went in there and found her dead and
went berserk. And then I called your parents-you know what restaurant they're at, don't you?"
"It's Valentino's. My mom said they were lucky to
get in."
"Okay. That'll work. But first we have to clean up
the bedroom. Get all the candles and stuff out. It's
got to look as if she just went to sleep, like any
other night."
Phil glanced at the sliding glass door. It was just
getting dark. But then Poppy had been sleeping a lot
these last few days. "We'll say she got tired and told
us to go watch TV," he said slowly, trying to conquer
his dazed feeling and be clearheaded. "And then I
went in after a while and checked on her."
"Right," James said, with a faint smile that didn't
reach his eyes.
It didn't take long to clear out the bedroom. The
hardest thing was that Phil had to keep looking at
Poppy, and every time he looked, his heart lurched.
She looked so tiny, so delicate-limbed. A Christmas
angel in June.
He hated to take the stuffed animals away from
her.
"She is going to wake up, isn't she?" he said, with
out looking at James.
"God, I hope so," James said, and his voice was
very tired. It sounded more like a prayer than a wish.
"If she doesn't you won't have to come after me with
a stake, Phil. I'll take care of it myself."
Phil was shocked-and angry. "Don't be stupid,"
he said brutally. "If Poppy stood for anything-if she stands
for anything-it's for life. Throwing your life
away would be like a slap in her face. Besides, even
if it goes wrong now, you did your best. Blaming
yourself is just stupid."
James looked at him blankly, and Phil realized
they'd managed to surprise each other. Then James
nodded slowly. "Thanks."
It was a milestone, the first time they'd ever been
on precisely the same wavelength. Phillip felt an odd
connection between them.
He looked away and said briskly, "Is it time to call
the restaurant?"
James glanced at his watch. "In just a few
minutes."
"If we wait too long they're going to have left by
the time we call."
"That doesn't
matter.
What matters is that we
don't have any paramedics trying to resuscitate her, or taking her to the hospital. Which means she's got
to be cold by the time anybody gets here."
Phil felt a wave of dizzy horror. "You're a cold
blooded snake after all."
"I'm just practical," James said wearily, as if speaking to a child. He touched one of Poppy's marble
white hands where it lay on the bedspread. "All
right. It's time. I'm going to call. You can go berserk
again if you want to."
Phil shook his head. He didn't have the energy
anymore. But he did feel like crying, which was al
most as good. Crying and crying like a kid who was lost and hurt.
"Get my mom," he said thickly.
He knelt on the floor beside Poppy's bed and
waited. Poppy's music was off and he could hear the
TV in the family room. He had no sense of time pass
ing until he also heard a car in the driveway.
Then he leaned his forehead against Poppy's mat
tress. His tears were absolutely genuine. At that mo
ment he was sure he'd lost her forever.
"Brace yourself," James said from behind him.
"They're here."
CHAPTER 11
T
he next few hours were the worst of Phil's life.
First and foremost was his mother. As soon as she
walked in, Phil's priorities changed from wanting her
to comfort him to wanting to comfort her. And of
course there wasn't any comfort. All he could do was
hold on to her.
It's too cruel, he thought dimly. There ought to be a way to tell her. But she would never believe it, and
if she did, she'd be in danger,
too....
Eventually the paramedics did come, but only after
Dr. Franklin had arrived.
"I called him," James said to Phil during one of
the interludes when Phil's mom was crying on Cliff.
"Why?"
"To keep things simple. In this state, doctors can issue a death certificate if they've seen you within
the last twenty days and they know the cause of
death. We don't want any hospitals or coroners."
Phil shook his head. "Why? What's your problem
with hospitals?"
"My problem," James said in a clipped, distinct
voice. "is that in hospitals they do autopsies."
Phil froze. He opened his mouth but no sound came out.
"And in funeral homes they do embalming. Which
is why I need to be around when they come to pick
up the body. I need to influence their minds not to
embalm her, or sew her lips shut, or-"
Phil bolted for the bathroom and was sick. He
hated James again.
But nobody took Poppy to the hospital; and Dr.
Franklin didn't mention an autopsy. He just held
Phil's mother's hand and spoke quietly about how
these things could happen suddenly, and how at least
Poppy had been spared any pain.
"But she was so much better today," Phil's mother
whispered through tears. "Oh, my baby, my baby.
She'd been getting worse, but today she was
better. "
"It happens like that sometimes," Dr. Franklin
said. "It's almost as if they rally for a last burst of
life."
"But I wasn't
there
for her," Phil's mom said, and
now there weren't any tears, just the terrible grating
sound of guilt. "She was alone when she died."
Phil said, "She was asleep. She just went to sleep
and never woke up. If you look at her, you can see
how peaceful it was."
He kept saying things like that, and so did Cliff and
so did the doctor, and eventually the paramedics
went away. And sometime after that, while his
mother was sitting on Poppy's bed and stroking her
hair, the people from the mortuary came.
"Just give me a few minutes," Phil's mother said, dry-eyed and pale. "I need a few minutes alone
with her."
The mortuary men sat awkwardly in the family room, and James stared at them. Phil knew what was
going on. James was fixing in their minds the fact
that there was to be no embalming.
"Religious reasons, is that it?" one of the men said
to Cliff, breaking a long silence.
Cliff stared at him, eyebrows coming together.
"What are you talking about?"
The man nodded. "I understand. It's no problem."
Phil understood, too. Whatever the man was hear
ing, it wasn't what Cliff was saying.
"The only thing is, you'll want to have the viewing
right away," the other man said to Cliff. "Or else a closed casket."
"Yes, it was unexpected," Cliff said, his face
straightening out. "It's been a very short illness."
So now
he
wasn't hearing what the men were say
ing. Phil looked at James and saw sweat trickling down his face. Clearly it was a struggle to control
three minds at once.
At last Cliff went in and got Phil's mother. He led
her to the master bedroom to keep her from seeing what happened next.
What happened was that the two men went into
- Poppy's room with a body bag and a gurney. When
they came out, there was a small, delicate hump in the bag.
Phil felt himself losing rationality again. He wanted
to knock things down. He wanted to run a marathon
to get away.
Instead, his knees started to buckle and his vision
grayed out.
Hard arms held him up, led him to a chair. "Hang
on," James said. "Just a few more minutes. It's al
most over."
Right then Phil could almost forgive him for being a bloodsucking monster.
It was very late that night when everyone finally
went to bed. To bed, not to sleep. Phil was one solid
ache of misery from his throat down to his feet, and
he lay awake with the light on until the sun came up.
The funeral home was like a Victorian mansion,
and the room Poppy was in was filled with flowers
and people. Poppy herself was in a white casket with gold fittings, and from far away she looked as if she
were sleeping.
Phil didn't like to look at her. He looked instead
at the visitors who kept coming in and filling the
viewing room and the dozens of wooden pews. He'd never realized how many people loved Poppy.
"She was so full of life," her English teacher said.
"I can't believe she's gone," a guy from Phil's foot
ball team said.
"I'll never forget her," one of her friends said,
crying.
Phil wore a dark suit and stood with his mother
and Cliff. It was like a receiving line for a wedding.
His mother kept saying, "Thank you for coming,"
and hugging people. The people went over and
touched the casket gently and cried.