Thunderland (8 page)

No, red flag the thought,
she told herself.
Don’t even think about it.

“I can’t believe you hit him,” Alice said. “Thomas had it coming, but that’s not like you at all. You must’ve been pushed to the edge.”

“I was. But I’m not sure that his grabbing me was the main reason I slapped him. It’s more like ... he’s a stranger to me.”

“What do you mean?” Alice said, her large, black eyes curious.

“We’ve had arguments in the past about his carelessness, but until today I hadn’t seen how much Thomas has really changed over the years; and seeing it scared the shit out of me. Since he seemed so different, I guess I wasn’t sure whether I could trust him not to hurt me. So I did the only thing I could to get away. Smacked him.”

Alice nodded. She understood. One of her ex-boyfriends had been abusive.

“Now that I’ve thought about it, I realize he’s been acting like a total stranger for a long time.” Linda’s hands tightened around the cold glass. “But when he shook me like that, it was a rude awakening.”

“I bet it was. I can’t see Thomas doing something like that to you. What got into him?”

Linda shrugged. “If I knew what had gotten into him, I’d pull it out.”

“It could be stress,” Alice said. “That’s not an excuse, of course, but it could explain a lot. After all, his dad’s sick and cooped up in that nursing home. He’s working day and night at that restaurant. All of that pressure would make anyone crazy.”

“I’ve talked to him about cutting his hours, but he acts as if the world would stop turning if he came home early one night,” Linda said. “Don’t even talk about taking a vacation, girl. The word isn’t in his vocabulary. We haven’t taken a vacation in ten years.”

“Let me guess: your last vacation was right before his daddy had the stroke and gave him the job.”

Linda nodded. “Everything changed for us when Thomas took over that damned place.
He
changed. He became exactly like his dad, obsessed with work. All he thinks about is The House of Soul. I swear, sometimes I’ve actually dreamed about bombing that place.”

“I can see why. It sounds worse than a mistress.” She eyed Linda speculatively. “I hate to bring this up, but have you ever suspected Thomas of ...”

“Oh, no. Definitely not. If he won’t take time out for me, he couldn’t take time out for another woman.”

“It was only a thought,” Alice said. “Some work-obsessed men have girlfriends on the side. They say it relieves stress, which is a bunch of self-serving bullshit, if you ask me. But you’re probably right. I hope you’re right.”

“I’m right. Thomas isn’t perfect, but he’s not that low-down. He knows I’d kill him if I ever found out he was messing around.”

“I heard that. But to be truthful, girl, we ought to stop worrying so much about Thomas and concentrate on you. Sure, Thomas has his faults, but your hands aren’t clean either. You cause some of your problems yourself.”

“Give me a break, Alice.”

“Hell, no. I’m your best friend, I’ll give you my honest opinion. Think about it. Do you have a tendency to shoot off at the mouth when you’re speaking to Thomas? Have you ever noticed that about yourself?”

“No.”

“Be honest, Lin.”

Linda twisted her hands in her lap. “Well, sometimes I guess I’m a little sharp-tongued. But I’m only like that when he’s screwed up something. Or when I suspect that he’s screwed up something.” She laughed, self-conscious. “I guess that’s most of the time.”

“Nothing turns a man off more than a woman with a smart mouth,” Alice said. “Nagging drives them nuts. I’ve seen it. I love my mama to death, but she had the biggest mouth in Chicago, and my daddy stayed in the streets because of it. Ifyou and Thomas are gonna get back on track, you have to learn to shut your ass up.”

“Be blunt, why don’t you?”

“You get my point. You have to put yourself in check. You have to convince Thomas that you won’t be a pain in the neck any longer. What it comes down to is, you have to show him that you love him.”

“He should know that I love him.”

“Maybe he should. But do you
show
him that you do?”

“Alice, it’s not that easy. I can show him how much I love him till kingdom come, but love is a two-way street. He has to do his share.”

“He will.”

“How do you know?”

“Because, in spite of all the mess he gives you, Thomas loves you. I see it in his eyes when he looks at you, hear it in his voice when he talks to you. The problem is, while you love each other, neither of you openly expresses your feelings. When you start to communicate your genuine feelings by your words and actions, he’ll respond.”

“I want to believe you,” Linda said. “But I’m so used to everything being miserable, I’ve become pretty damn cynical.”

“You can get out of that rut. All you have to do is hope. And try.”

She closed her eyes and tilted her head back. The sunlight felt deliciously warm on her skin; as she luxuriated in the glow, she considered Alice’s advice. Could she try to revive her marriage? She wanted to stay with Thomas, but she wondered whether the struggle to find happiness with him would be worth it. Thomas was a seemingly incurable workaholic. Sometimes he could be self-centered, distant, and amazingly thoughtless. In spite of his flaws, she believed he really loved her. Over the years, he had often shown his feelings for her, in almost imperceptible ways: his silent, steadfast support of her freelance writing career; his habit of coming to her defense whenever someone assailed her unfairly; the way he often held her close late at night, when he thought she was sleeping. There were lots of other things he did, too, small but telling tokens of his emotions. Could she convince him to stop handing her the occasional love tokens and give her everything he had?

She believed she could. It would take determination, love, and tons of patience. She had the determination and love, but she wasn’t sure about the patience. After ten years of frustration, her reservoir of patience felt depleted. But maybe she could hang on a bit longer. Maybe.

She opened her eyes and looked at Alice.

“Okay, I’ll do it,” she said. “I’ll take your advice and work to bring Thomas around.”

Alice smiled. “Good. I knew you weren’t a quitter, Lin.”

“Still ... what if it doesn’t work?”

Alice hesitated. “I’m sure it’ll work. But if you do everything you can to prove that you love him, and he keeps acting like a stranger, then you might have to put yourself through one of the most painful things in this crazy world of ours: a divorce.”

* * *

They were trapped.

Disbelieving, Jason stared at the barricaded door.

He was afraid to move-almost, in fact, afraid to breathe. Holding his breath, he looked at Shorty and Brains. Terror shone in their eyes, and they stood as still as wax figures, as if the slightest movement would draw the attention of the unearthly intruder and provoke a violent reaction.

Silence gripped the room in a vise.

Don’t hurt us,
Jason prayed.
Whoever you are, please don’t hurt us.

The stereo system that occupied a long mahogany shelf along one wall turned on, rows of buttons lighting up. A hip-hop song played at medium volume. As Jason watched breathlessly, the volume knob twisted all the way around to the maximum level. Heavy bass thundered from the speakers, the walls and windows shook, and Jason’s teeth rattled.

Propelled into action, Brains rushed to the stereo. He ripped the power cord out of the wall socket.

The music played on.

Brains looked dumbly at the cord in his hand.

Incredibly, even though the volume control had been cranked to the limit, the music continued to get louder. Booming, pounding, hammering, the speakers literally jumped on the shelf; the music grew distorted and fuzzy. Jason covered his ringing ears, but that didn’t help much. The volume continued to escalate, and grey smoke began to churn from the speakers. Both speakers suddenly spat orange sparks and short-circuited with a nerve-snapping bang, falling silent at last.

The three of them uncovered their ears.

“Damn,” Shorty said, “That was—”

The bed jerked.

Like a bronco with a wasp up its tail, the double bed began to buck and bump, rising up, and then slamming onto the floor with enough force to nearly knock Jason off balance. The bed-sheets slid off the mattress in a tangle, pillows bouncing onto the carpet. The bed rose higher each time the entity snatched it into the air and threw it down, until it smacked both the ceiling and the floor, like a pinball trapped between a couple of bumpers.

To Jason, the noise was almost as amazing as the sight of the possessed bed. He thought he could feel blood oozing from his punished ears.

Finally, the bed dropped and remained still.

Jason, Shorty, and Brains exhaled. But they did not move, Jason sensing, as Brains and Shorty probably did, that this bizarre exhibition of power had not yet concluded.

For a moment, stillness.

Then, instead of concentrating on one object, the poltergeist went wild, attacking everything in the room. The ceiling lamp shattered, glass raining to the carpet. The closet popped open, and shirts, jackets, jeans, shoes, and other assorted pieces of clothing flew out like birds, darting through the air in every direction, bombarding Jason and the others, who shielded themselves with their arms. In
the same fashion, the bureau burst open, T-shirts and socks and boxer shorts taking flight and joining the fray. Desk drawers shot out like torpedoes and whacked into the walls, spilling their contents as they flew. Both bed pillows split open, releasing a blizzard of feathers. The windows opened and shut, opened and shut, curtains billowing and flapping. On another shelf, a glass tank filled with goldfish ruptured, and water and fish poured out. Then the bed sprang into life again, bucking and hopping like a piece of furniture in a fun house.

Crouched in a corner, buried under mounds of clothing and debris, Jason could not take it anymore. He fought to his feet and shouted in his loudest voice: “You crazy motherfucker! Stop this shit right now! I mean it!”

He was aware of how foolish he sounded-he didn’t have any power over this thing-but his words seemed to have a magical effect. The destructive spirit instantly departed: the bed quit jumping, the windows stopped opening and closing, the curtains ceased flapping, and every piece of clothing wafted to the floor in lifeless piles.

Jason blinked, stunned, as silence settled over the room once more. Both of them smothered under clothes, Shorty and Brains crawled into the open.

Tremors shook Jason, spreading through his legs and arms and rattling through to the core of his body. He hugged himself tightly, feeling as if he might fall to pieces like a cheap toy.

With a gasp, Shorty buckled over and vomited loudly. Brains patted his cousin’s back and murmured words of comfort. But Brains, too, appeared to be deeply shaken.

“Let’s get out of here, fellas,” Jason said, his voice brittle due to his dry throat. ‘We’ve gotta go outside, get some fresh air. I feel like I’m gonna pass out.”

Although his legs quaked, Jason made it to the door. Brains and Shorty trudged behind him.

In their shell-shocked condition, it took all three of them to move the bureau that blocked the doorway. They filed outside solemnly, like mourners leaving a funeral.

Three hours later, after they had cleaned up the wreckage in the bedroom, Jason, Shorty, and Brains had a meeting in the den. A strategy meeting. They had to decide on a plan for dealing with the Stranger. Until they learned this entity’s name and purpose, referring to him as “the Stranger” seemed appropriate, because both its identity and motivation eluded them.