Ten minutes later, he went down the aisle of the Seven-Eleven, loading things up in his arms. Cans of soup and more chili, plastic bottles of mineral water-Doot couldn't think of what else to get. Maybe some more Pepsi. He headed to the cooler at the back of the store and picked up a couple of bottles, carrying them under his arm.
"Hey, Doot." Garza and a couple others from the stoner crowd, the same ones who'd been left lounging around after the party, had come in and were hanging around the magazine rack, cruising for tit shots. Garza's big sloppy smile spread across his face. "How's your girlfriend?"
Doot stopped at the head of the aisle and looked at him. "What're you talking about?"
All three of the teenagers were grinning now. "You know," said Garza, lowering the copy of Penthouse in his hands. "That wild piece of ass you got hidden away. I bet she gives head like a Hoover-"
The other two snorted laughter. The notion of somebody like Doot getting it on with a waxed-and-pol-ished number like the one that had shown up at the door and asked for him had finally struck them as hilarious. It hadn't really happened-at least not the asking for him part. They must've been really fucked up to have imagined it.
"Hey…"
Garza smirked at him. "What?"
"Hold on a second," said Doot. "I'll be right back."
He walked over to the cash register and laid the cans and plastic bottles down on the counter. The guy behind the counter was picking his teeth with a fingernail. He didn't care what went on; it wasn't his store.
Doot stopped alongside the magazine rack. "Hey, Stevie."
The other's smile faded. Something, the look in Doot's eye, made him take a step backward. But not before Doot could grab him by the back of the neck.
"I got something for you." Doot planted his other fist in Garza's stomach. Garza doubled over, right into the arc of the fist coming up into his chin. He fell backwards, arms flailing spastically; his hand caught and dragged a row of magazines off the rack.
"Fuh
-uck
." Goggle-eyed, Garza's buddies stared at him laid out on the linoleum floor, a split-beaver centerfold of the Pet of the Month fluttering open on his chest. They looked up at Doot, then backed away toward the door. They finally broke and scrambled outside, running across the asphalt parking lot.
The cash register guy had already rung everything up and bagged it. Doot walked back over to the counter, pulling the money from his jeans pocket.
***
He was strapping the bag onto the motorbike's carrier rack when he heard more running steps, coming toward him this time. He looked up and saw Anne, breathless, coming to a stop.
"Doot-where have you been?" She grabbed his arm. She panted for a couple of seconds, pushing her hair away from her brow with her other hand. "I've been looking all over for you! I've got to talk to you-"
He finished tightening the bungee cord over the top of the bag, snapping the hooks together. "I don't have time to talk." He pulled his arm out of her grasp.
She grabbed him again, both arms, tugging him around to face her.
"It's that stuff, that water you showed me." Her face was still red, from running to find him. She looked straight into his eyes. "There's something wrong… it does something…"
He shoved her away, hard enough to stagger her back a couple of steps. "I thought you were the one who didn't believe in all that." He climbed onto the bike and started the engine.
"Doot-wait…"
She ran after him, but he was already beyond her reach. She stood watching as the bike scattered gravel, crossing the dirt strip onto the road.
TWENTY-THREE
He lifted his head from his dark sleep and dreaming. Sitting on the floor of the tiled room; the smell, the taste of the water heavy in his throat and lungs; arms wrapped around his knees, sheltering the steady hammer of his pulse.
The girl again-he'd seen her, the laughing mouth red and wet as blood. The skin of her bare throat and breasts a perfect transparent ivory that yielded to his touch but moved with no breath beneath. And it had been night in the dreaming, great rolling fields of it outside the examining room windows, the mountains shapes that ate the stars. The animals of the red eyes had paced and watched, their gaze lifted intently to the building they circled around.
Here
, she'd said, pulling back from him, teasing. She'd slid away from the examining table and his embrace. The smell of his own fevered sweat had choked him as he'd watched her pull something-not one of the blue glass bottles, or a chrome sharp-edged tool-from one of the cabinets on the wall. A book, with lined pages and flowing script in black India ink.
See
? She'd held the book low against her breasts, the small bleeding wounds of her nipples just above the paper white as her flesh. He raised himself up on one elbow.
Look
-her smile had shown the points of her teeth.
See for yourself
.
Dreaming. He had woken, with her smile and the book still there inside his head. But not the words written in it. That was the secret.
Mike touched his chest with the flat of his hand. The shirt, the one he'd taken from Aitch's closet, was still wet from when he'd drunk and spilled the water from his palms. A white shirt, the front discolored with a dark, smeared blossom.
Kneeling, he rubbed his hand across the bottom of the stone basin, then licked the moistness from his fingers. The taste uncoiled on his tongue, then slid down his throat.
He turned his head, looking up at the ceiling. And through it, to the floor above. He could already see it, waiting for him there. He stood up, wiping his hands against his hips.
***
She'd heard the crashing sounds from upstairs. They'd pulled Lindy from sleep, a chemical haze jerked away from her by a sudden rush of fright. Her eyes opened wide as she lay on her back, hearing something else smash into the floor above.
"Mike-what is it-"
At a flying run, she'd taken the stairs, the sounds growing louder with each step. Now she stood in the doorway of the old clinic's examining room, watching Mike rip through everything there.
He didn't turn to look at her. He toppled the examining table onto its side and ran his hands over the rust-specked chrome beneath. With a manic fury, he crossed to one of the wall cabinets and swept the glass bottles off the shelves. They exploded on the floor, the shards grinding beneath his feet.
"It's here…" His voice came through his clenched teeth. "I know it is…"
"Mike-"
He shot her a look of seething anger. With one step, he was across the room; he slapped her hard enough to knock her back against the doorframe. She felt herself sliding down it, hands clutching the wall behind. In the thin curved mirror of one of the examining table's legs, she saw her face with the red imprint of his hand.
Mike had already returned to his search. The antique X-ray machine tilted, then crashed to the floor as he shoved it aside. It was followed by one of the pharmaceutical cabinets, wrenched free from the wall and thrown behind him.
He stopped for a moment, panting for breath. Dizzied from the blow of his hand, Lindy watched him, her back against the bottom of the door.
A niche was sunk into the wall, in the center of the space where the cabinet had been mounted. Edges of rough plaster were framed on either side by the building's timbers. Mike stepped closer to the hole, his stomach pressing against the countertop beneath. He reached into it and pulled something out that he held with both hands as he looked down at it.
He was smiling when his gaze came up and fastened on Lindy's face, as if seeing her there for the first time. Sweat plastered his hair to his forehead and neck.
"Look." He squatted down in front of her, holding out the thing he'd found. His voice trembled with excitement.
She tasted salt in her mouth and knew it was blood. Her tongue had cut against her teeth when he slapped her. She looked down and saw that it was a book he held.
The leather cover was cracked and fire-scorched, with the single word Registry in faded gilt lettering.
Mike opened the book, leafing through the pages, stiff and yellowed with age, the edges blackened by ash. She could see, upside-down, the old-style handwriting, full of swooping flourishes. People's names, then other words, and dates-the years were all in the 1890's.
His finger traced one of the lines. "You see," he murmured, voice softened by his fascination. "They'd put down what they came here for." He touched another word. "Their ailments. What they were hoping to be cured of. Vapors and fits…" He looked up with his smile. "Female troubles…"
She kept still, trying not even to breathe, as he paged further through the book. Her face still ached, but the dizziness had ebbed away.
A piece of paper that had been creased and stuck in the registry-he took it out and unfolded it, the browned surfaces rustling in his hands.
He nodded, eyes closed in satisfaction. "This is it. She told me…"
Lindy didn't know what he was talking about. The way he was acting… She wondered if she could slide out of his reach, without his seeing her, and out into the hallway and away from him. Her hand reached to the side of the doorway, pulling her a couple of inches closer to it.
Mike's eyes opened. He held the unfolded piece of paper out to her. "See for yourself."
The paper looked like some kind of poster, an advertisement. For the clinic-the word THERMALENE, in big ornate lettering, filled the top space. Underneath were gray-toned, old prints, framed in ovals like the pictures she remembered seeing in her grandmother's photo albums. A big one of the clinic building itself and smaller ones of the room with the stone basins and the lobby, with potted palms stationed by deep sofas and armchairs.
"There." Mike's finger touched the paper. "See it?"
At the bottom, another oval, with a man's face. Wearing a doctor's white coat-the shoulders of it were just visible. The man had dark hair, parted in the middle, so he looked younger; but he looked just like the old man who was the caretaker here. The same skull face, the flesh tight against the bone. And without the dark glasses, small gold rims instead-the ancient portrait gazed out directly at her.
Mike's finger traced the words underneath the man's face. " 'Doctor Wilhelm Nelder,' " he read aloud. " 'Founder and chief physician.' "
She didn't understand. All she knew was that a wild, frightening joy had bloomed inside Mike.
He took back the paper, folding it and putting it in his shirt pocket. He nodded, lost in thought, as though she no longer existed for him. "Now," he murmured. "Now I know…"
He stood up and left the examining room, leaving her crouched upon the floor.
***
The old man was sitting on the rock outside his shack-where Mike had seen him before, when he'd gone up into the hills.
Nelder looked up at the sound of pebbles and dust shifting down the slope. Sun glinted off the dark lenses over his eyes. He made no move as the visitor made his way down to him.
He looked up at Mike, standing before him. And the piece of paper, browned with age, that Mike held out. Nelder glanced at the paper, but didn't touch it.
"There's more than what you told me." Mike tossed the paper onto the ground. "About the water. A lot more."
Nelder shrugged, his gaunt face expressionless. "There's more to a lot of things."
Mike prodded the paper with his foot. The oval-framed picture, of a young, thin-faced man, gazed up.
"You've lived an awful long time…
Doctor
Nelder. When you add it all up-what does it come to? A couple hundred years? Something like that. That's a long time. A long time to keep yourself alive. And a long time to be sitting on something like this. Keeping it to yourself."
The old man stood up and faced Mike.
"You'll have to leave now." A fine tremor, the skin growing even paler, touched the skeletal face. "Immediately. The water…" Nelder's voice trembled and broke. "It heals, but then it changes. I know; I have been here a long time. I know what it wants." Fervor pitched the words higher. "It wants bad things, dark things like itself. It made me do terrible… things…"
Mike gazed at the old man, a smile of contempt turning on his own face.
Nelder looked away from him. The years weighed upon his shoulders, bowing his spine.
"But it made me want to know things, the things
it
knows…" A whisper now. "There was blood all over, and they looked at me, and they would scream… The water kept them alive, but they kept on screaming and screaming… I had to stop. I had to stop everything."
Nelder turned and grabbed Mike's arm, the long, large-knuckled fingers squeezing into the flesh. "That's why I set fire to the clinic. To end it; to end everything. And then when it was over, when everything was gone… the bad things, the screaming… I had to stay. To guard it. To keep anyone from finding it again." The voice screeched up into Mike's face. "I had to stay, and go on drinking it, and bathing in it, letting it inside me, letting it go on living and wanting…"
Mike could see his own sneering face reflected in the dark glasses.
"Bullshit." The stupid old fuck; the stupid
scared
old fuck-Mike felt disgust growing in his gut. "You're afraid. It's kept you alive, but you got old, and now you're afraid." He shook his head. "But I'm not."