“It’s been hours and hours.” Sadie moved off to the edge of the dog circle for a better view of the door. “He couldn’t be outside all this time. He’s got to be in the house. Why doesn’t he come down here?”
“He’s already searched the basement with the dog. He may never come back here.” Gwen didn’t believe that any longer, but it seemed important to keep saying it, thinking it, to ward off all the ugly pictures in her head. He would be so angry when he came back, when he saw all the—
“Then what is he doing? Why didn’t he take the car?”
“Maybe he walked home.” Gwen winced as one of the journals fell from her hand and grazed the injured leg, rousing the dead weight in her calf muscle. She felt the little monsters stirring inside her flesh, uncurling their small hands of sharp nails to stab her from within. But it was only a feeble gesture this time, a weak theme of aches and little pricks. She was learning the scale of relative pain, songs from hell. The drugs in her system forced the monsters back to sleep. She touched her leg. They stirred again and sang to her upon request this time. Each puncture was a separate mouth screaming through her nerve endings.
And now there was something else in this strange world which she could control.
“Hurts, doesn’t it?” Sadie sat down in the dirt beside her. “Time for a pill?”
Gwen shook her head. “You were right about the pills. They slow me down.” And if Sadie meant to do this thing, then it would take proper timing. The man had to get inside the door and prop it open with the concrete block before Sadie gave the Geronimo command. Timing was everything.
“Your leg hurts a lot now, doesn’t it?”
“I’m all right.” She was not, but the anticipation of the pain had been worse than the real thing. “It’s not so bad.” And wasn’t she thinking more clearly now? Yes, she could list every possible error, every opportunity for disaster. Her fear was mounting, the leg was throbbing, and the pain was insistent, constant in its song. “I’m fine.”
“Sure you are.” Sadie, the unbeliever, ran off down the aisle and disappeared into the white room. She came back with a pharmacy bottle and a jar of water. “These you can take every three hours. It’s been about that long.”
“Just one.” Gwen took the pill and the jar.
“Should I throw him another biscuit?”
“No. He should stay hungry for a while. I can use that to reinforce the pose.” She set the jar down on the dirt beside the pile of journals. “It’s Christmas Eve, isn’t it? Maybe he won’t come back, maybe we can—”
“Best line from the killer-Santa movie—‘Christmas Eve is the scariest night of the year.’ ” She squeezed Gwen’s arm and offered her a smile, a small one. “I know this isn’t a movie—and I know you don’t want to do this, but we can’t wait any longer.”
“Miss Vickers will be back the day after Christmas.” If she could only convince Sadie to bide time, to hide and wait. She could not yet wrap her mind around what they were planning to do to The Fly—No—the man, the real and solid man. He would hurt her when—
“So she’ll be home soon,” said Sadie. “All the more reason why he has to find us now, before Miss Vickers comes back.” Sadie helped her to stand up and then led her to a cart alongside the one which covered the shallow grave. This one was also filled with loose soil.
“I didn’t want you to see this. But now I think it’s time you did.” Sadie pulled out the cart to reveal a second hole, a shallow rectangle in the earth.
“That’s my grave, isn’t it, Sadie?”
“Yes. Nothing happened by accident. He didn’t
accidentally
hurt me. He meant to murder me. You’re alive, but here’s your grave—waiting for you.”
“Let’s kill him,” said Gwen.
Rouge turned off the road and into the private driveway. His foot slammed on the brake yards short of the house. It was the sight of the Christmas tree lights that shocked him. They blinked in soft diffusion through the drapes of the front windows.
He took his foot off the brake pedal and drove the car under the portico that had once sheltered the carriage horses of another century. And now he could see more of the twinkling Christmas decorations. All the first-floor windows were ablaze with interior lights strung around their frames.
He turned off the ignition and left the car, ignoring the flagstone path, his shoes pounding across the yard. He was through the door and staring at the Norwegian pine beyond the foyer. It was huge, dominating the center of the wide parlor.
His mother had not put up a Christmas tree in fifteen years. The last time he had seen one in this house was the morning when his twin was found. He knew his sister was dead before the policemen came with the news. He remembered looking at his watch, because he wanted to know the precise time when Susan’s life had stopped.
In the early light of dawn, he had walked barefoot down the stairs to find his mother sitting by the Christmas tree. For the first time since Susan’s disappearance, Ellen Kendall had been without fear in her eyes. She was beyond that.
She also knew.
Mother and son had only exchanged glances when the policemen had come to the door an hour later, two grown men in tears. Bradly Kendall had ushered them into the house. Five people stood in front of the tree that Christmas morning, and his father was the last one to know that Susan was dead.
And now Rouge was staring at the same decorations, the same blinking lights. He turned to see his mother seated near the fireplace. It roared and crackled with burning Yule logs.
“It’s Christmas Eve,” she said in answer to his confusion. “Half-price sale on trees. What woman could resist?”
Her face was glowing with firelight. She stood up and crossed the room to kiss him warmly on both cheeks. When she hugged him, he wished it could go on forever. He had missed her so much. Too soon, she stepped away from him.
“Rouge, you remember Julie.”
The Washington columnist was sitting on the other side of the fireplace. The old man was drinking from a brandy snifter, but there was only a coffee cup by his mother’s chair. Rouge caught her smiling at him, as she caught him checking on her. There was a teasing brightness in her eyes, a haunt of the old days.
Hello, Mom. So you’ve come back—all the way home.
“Look at this, babe.” She was holding up a press pass. “Julie got it for me. Useful little thing.” She flashed a smile at the older man.
The columnist stood up to take Rouge’s hand in his. “My apologies for not acknowledging you at the police station. You must have thought I was rude.”
“No, sir. Not at—”
“Yes you did.” Julie turned to Ellen. “The boy made me feel like I’d just kicked a puppy.” He clapped Rouge on the back. “But there was no point in tipping off Arnie Pyle. He never learned to share his toys or his friends. You understand. Of course you do. You were such a brilliant child. I’ll be watching your career with great interest, Rouge.”
The reporter was pulling on his topcoat as Ellen handed him his scarf. “Julie’s heading back to Washington tonight.”
“I wish I could stay longer, but I’m running late.” He shook Rouge’s hand. “Son, you turned out well. Before I saw you at the police station, I thought your mother was only bragging.” Now he turned to his hostess and made a subtle elegant gesture, the mere suggestion of a bow from the waist. “Ellen, I hope you found the evening profitable. I wish you both—good night.”
Rouge knew this was an amendment of the automatic phrase for the holiday season. Despite the festive tree in the center of the room, this was also the eve of a dark anniversary, and Julie was a very gentle man. So it surprised Rouge when his mother kissed the reporter’s cheek and said, “Merry Christmas, Julie.”
From different sides of the cellar, the children watched the door in silent anticipation, as they would await the rising of a theater curtain. The dog was holding the Sitting Bull pose longer than he ever had before.
Timing was everything.
Oh, why couldn’t they just stay here in the dark, lost in the trees and the mushroom aisles? Gwen looked over at Sadie, lit only by the single bulb over the door to the white room—all else was darkness. The ceiling had shut down for the night, and the mushroom tables were dark shapes standing in rigid formation. The only sound was the hiss from the radiators coming to life after the artificial day had ended.
Sadie turned her head so Gwen could see her face. There was no fear in it—there never was. But Sadie didn’t know how many things could go wrong. And then the man would be furious. He would want to get even, to hurt back. This was so crazy. She wanted to end it, to stop it. Perhaps if she warned the man, he wouldn’t be so mad.
But what about Sadie? She would never understand that. She would only wonder what had happened to all of Gwen’s good intentions to help her kill a man.
Gwen looked back at the door. Maybe he wouldn’t come. Maybe he thought she was lost in the woods, frozen to death. He might have run away.
What was that? Was it the door?
She tried to sort out this sound from the hiss of the radiator. Yes, the door was opening. He was coming. She could see the dark shape moving into the cellar.
Don’t panic, not yet.
She watched him nudge the concrete block into place with his foot. The door was propped.
Not yet.
He was advancing through the trees. All the while, the dog was silent, holding the pose, waiting, just as Sadie was waiting on the signal. Now Gwen clicked on the flashlight, and Sadie screamed, “Geronimo!”
The dog was bounding forward. The man didn’t move until it was too late. Shock had pinned him to the spot. The dog was almost upon him, crouching for the lunge. The man turned and started back to the door. The dog had his paws on the man’s back, angling for the neck.
Man and dog were going down.
And now the whole world exploded with a bang. The crack of thunder filled the basement with noise. Sound bounced off the walls; it filled her brain and sent her reeling away from the tree. She scrambled back to her hiding place, putting her hand to the wound to make it hurt, to keep her focused on what was happening—and not what
might
happen.
The dog was not moving anymore. The man was getting to his feet and walking to the door, bent grotesquely with one hand pressed to his leg. She could barely make out the shape of the gun in his other hand. He fell to the ground. Perhaps he was hurt worse than she thought. But no, he was on his feet again, moving into the light from the staircase beyond the door, and there was no trace of a limp. This was her worst-case scenario: the man was only slightly wounded, hardly harmed at all.
The dog made no noise. He lay so very still he might be dead. What had they done?
The man used his foot to move the concrete prop, and then the door closed behind him. Gwen waited, hardly breathing, listening for the car engine. The lightbulb over the door to the white room went out, and she sat in total darkness.
Then Sadie was by her side, taking the flashlight. She clicked it on and held the beam under her face; it took on a savage cast of shadow in the underlight. She pointed in the direction of the white room. “That was a brand-new lightbulb over the door. It didn’t just burn out. I think he switched off the fuses.”
They waited in silence until they heard the car engine dying away. They crept close to the walls, then hurried down the aisle of mushroom tables. Sadie was first into the white room. She tried the switch on the wall.
Nothing. So it would always be night from now on. He had killed the light.
“It’s not so bad,” said Sadie. “There’s loads of batteries under the sink. We can keep the flashlight going forever.” She went down on hands and knees to root through the lower cabinets. “I’m sorry it didn’t work. Really sorry. You were right.”
Gwen sat in the middle of the floor, hugging herself in the dark. “It’s all right, Sadie. We did the best we could.” She felt the first calm that did not come from a pill. The worst thing she could have imagined had come and gone, and she was not broken in every bone and bleeding rivers on the ground. Nothing from her imagination had harmed her yet. “I wonder if the dog is dead.”
“Doesn’t matter. He might as well be dead. You know he’s been shot. Probably useless now. A gun. Damn—a gun. Who could’ve figured on that? You want me to check him?”
“No,” said Gwen. “You can’t go near him now. He’s so badly wounded, he’s more dangerous than he’s ever been.” She had watched this animal go from repose to attack mode in the fraction of a second.
Brave dog.
The man would at least never kick him again. And now he could not even be touched, for a wounded animal could not be trusted. He was going to die all alone.
Sadie opened a bottle of pills, then filled the jar at the sink.
Gwen took a pill—only one. Sadie held out another. “To help you sleep.”
As if she could. She waved off the second pill. “Let’s get out of here. It’s too cold in this room.” Gwen turned the flashlight on the vent. A ribbon was flying straight out to signal the airflow. “How come the air conditioner works if the light switch doesn’t?”
“Separate fuses,” said Sadie. “On the fuse box at my house, there are labels for everything, and one is just for the air conditioner.”
They walked out of the white room, but they were not greeted by the same old wall of warm air. The temperature had dropped and the hissing sound was gone.
“That creep.” Sadie shined the flashlight on the far wall of radiators. “It wasn’t just the light fuses. He turned off the furnace too.” The yellow beam lowered to flash on bare feet, and Sadie’s disembodied voice said, “I can’t believe the heat could go down so fast.”
“No,” said Gwen. “Heat rises.” She took the flashlight from Sadie’s hand and pointed it up to the high ceiling beyond the cave of the mushroom farm.
And the temperature continued to drop.