From his mother's bedroom across the hall came a sudden piercing yelp. It sounded like a cry of pain. . . but then Leona's dry cackle followed it, and Sam settled slowly back in his seat. Fright fermented sickly inside of him. How many times had he been faked out by her middle-of-the-night shrieks? Too many to count. Apparently she had company, although Sam hadn't heard anyone come in. He should've known.
Sam had given up trying to keep the names of her boyfriends straight, mostly because none of them stayed around long enough for that little nicety to matter very much. They were all drunks anyway, beer-bellied losers she picked up at the Strand or the Prospect Hotel. And the hell of it was, she didn't want any of them hanging around for more than a night or two. She wore her promiscuity like a brand. She was punishing herself, Sam knew; herself and him, too.
He leaned back in his chair and pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes, trying to shut out the rutting, piggish noise of them over there. To see his mother this way both saddened and disgusted Sam. And what made it worse was that he had no one to talk to about it. Peter flat out refused to acknowledge even the whispered mention of her name. And if the truth be known, Sam didn't blame him, not one iota. When Peter told him what she had done on that day, stumbling drunkenly into his room and laying a funeral wreath on his chest. . . Even now, five years later, the thought of it sickened Sam to the point of puking.
Across the hall a glass smashed. Leona shrieked again, but this time it was a shriek of fury, one Sam knew only too well.
"Awright," she shrilled. "That tears it, you stunned fucking lummox! Get your fat ass outta here. Now!"
Sam lurched forward in his chair, the thick muscles in his shoulders bunching in almost painful readiness. He'd remained gangly until the middle of his fifteenth year, but then the hormones had walloped him hard and Sam had shot up like a bad weed. Now, at twenty, he was a solid one hundred eighty pounds.
"You don't shout at me," a slurred voice bellowed back at her. "No. You don't shout at me, you dipshit bitch!"
Another glass smashed.
And Sam was out of his chair and across the hall, booting his mother's bedroom door open so violently the knob punched a hole in the wall on the opposite side.
Sam came face to face with the biggest, meanest-looking redneck he'd ever seen. . . but the bozo had his shorts bunched around his ankles, his half-stiff dick cupped in one hand, and it was all he could do to fend off Leona's hailstorm of blows. Standing there ready to commit murder, Sam might have found the whole sick spectacle amusing had it involved anyone but his mom.
"Who the fuck is this?" the redneck squawked.
"That's my kid," Leona told him, her tone eerily calm now. She flashed her red eyes at Sam. "Don't you know enough to knock before you come barging into a room? Didn't I teach you any manners?"
As ridiculous as all of this was, Sam felt himself flush at his mother's reprimand. Meanwhile her suitor was busily jerking on his pants, darting nervous glances first at Leona and then at Sam, trying to avoid falling on his ass in the process. The room was a mess, stained sheets and rumpled clothing scattered everywhere, all of it reeking of stale booze and rancid sweat. Against one wall the runny remnants of a tossed whiskey bottle oozed wetly to the floor.
Sam backed out of the room.
"You don't gotta go, Johnny," he heard his mother say poutily as Sam pulled the door shut.
"Fuck that noise," Johnny replied. "You're fuckin' crazy."
A few minutes later, after the man had stomped sullenly out, Sam heard his mother sobbing in the dark of her bedroom.
Unable to sleep, Sam went back to the books. When the telephone rang an hour later, it startled him more than the shouting had earlier on.
"Yes?" he said, his voice a little shaky. Late night calls were seldom very cheerful.
"Is this Mr. Gardner?"
"Yes, this is Sam Gardner. Who is this?"
"It's Shawna Blane. I'm a nur—"
"I know who you are," Sam cut in. "Is something wrong with my brother?"
"He's had another. . . spell, Sam. Trouble with his breathing. We had to put him on a ventilator this time. He's in the ICU."
Sam sighed raggedly. This had happened once before, two years ago, but they had not had to ventilate him that time. Peter had recovered on his own. Dr. Lowe had taken Sam aside after that attack and explained the situation.
"It's only going to get worse," he told Sam frankly. "This type of attack will recur again and again until either we do something about it or he dies."
"What can be done?" Sam inquired.
"There's a device that can be implanted under the skin," Lowe said. "It gives off a series of electronic impulses which stimulate the diaphragm, kicking it into action automatically. Without it, I'm afraid, Peter will just go on having these attacks."
But Peter had balked vehemently at the very idea.
"Forget it," he told Sam. "One of the few things I can still do on my own is breathe, and there's no way I'm going to let them take that away from me, too."
On the other end of the line the nurse cleared her throat, breaking the brief but oppressive silence. Her words made Sam feel as if she'd been reading his mind. "Dr. Lowe had a surgeon implant the device he told you about last time, Sam. It's functioning well—"
"I thought you needed my brother's permission for that," Sam interjected.
"Not when it's considered a lifesaving procedure," the nurse replied, her tone defensive.
"I see."
Sam glanced up and saw his mother leaning in the doorway, the dim light of her gaze fluctuating between stupor and dull curiosity.
"Is he going to be all right?" Sam said into the phone.
The nurse hesitated, just slightly, but enough to swamp Sam with dread.
"We think so," she admitted at last. "He's still unconscious. We came very close to losing him."
"I'll be right over," Sam said, and hung up.
Grabbing his jacket, he started past his mother—but she blocked his way with her body. Her nightie was filmy, and Sam could see the tired sag of her breasts through the fabric.
"Where ya goin', Sammy?" Her voice was breathy and low. . . almost seductive.
Deflecting a knife thrust of revulsion, Sam took a quick step back from the boozy heat of her.
"It's Peter," he said quietly. "He's sick."
"He's not sick!" Leona roared, her face clenching like a brawler's fist. She advanced on Sam menacingly, the gleam in her eyes insane. "He's dead!"
But instead of recoiling as he normally did, Sam took hold of his mother and shook her, shook her till her eyes cleared. Then he clutched her face roughly, forcing her to meet his gaze.
"My brother is not dead," he told her in a chilling monotone.
Leona pulled away, a growl rattling in her throat. Sam brushed past her into the hallway. "He's dead, damn you," she hollered at his back. "Why can't you get that through your thick skull? That. . . thing, that crippled fucking head is not my Peter. Do you hear me, Sammy? That is not my Peter!"
In the elevator on the way down, Sam hammered the graffiti-scrawled paneling, dulling the edge of his fury. In the grimy lobby he hitched up his collar, then thrust his fists into the pockets of his jeans.
The rail of his mother's voice dogged him into the cold autumn rain.
The sight of Peter, still as death, tubes snaking out of every orifice, caused time to fold back on itself for Sam. Suddenly it was six years ago and he was a skinny, pimple-faced teenager again, bumping into the nurse who had led him along the too-bright ICU corridor to the hell his brother's life had become. Suddenly the tears were back, the guilt, and the overwhelming sorrow.
He shifted closer to the bed, searching his brother's face for signs of awareness, finding none. The hiss of the ventilator and the beep of the monitors were the only sounds.
"Peter?" he said quietly, almost whispering.
And to Sam's surprise, Peter's eyes fluttered open. They strayed about unfocused at first, the eyes of a fighter tangled in the ropes. Then they found Sam's eyes and cleared a little before filling with tears. A frail smile struggled for life around the tube in his mouth.
Sam touched Peter's forehead. "How ya doin', bro?" he said, unable to keep his voice from breaking.
His heart fell when Peter shook his head, the movement unutterably weary. A nightmare was born then, the first of many Sam would endure before the bond between them was broken. Peter was trying to say something around the tube, as he had so long ago—and again that eldritch feeling of time bending back on itself stole through Sam like a chill. Leaning over the bedside, he half expected Kelly to sidle in next to him, or his mother to cry in a drunken slur, "He's tryna say something, Sammy!"
Peter's eyes shifted, sliding to their corners, indicating the ventilator that currently sustained his life.
"Uhnn," Sam, said reading Peter's lips. "Uhnn. . . fflug. . . idd."
Unplug it.
Horror clasped Sam's heart and gave it a squeeze. He looked into his brother's eyes, searching them for confusion, for the dim fog of drugs. . . but he saw only the clear light of reason.
And with muscles functioning temporarily beyond his control, Sam found himself reaching for the plug. Suddenly the dismal vista that was the balance of his crippled brother's life flashed before Sam's interior eye like a convict's first glimpse of the chair, and he was doing it, he was reaching for that plug. . . because this cruel parody of life was worse than death, worse by far. It was a death unfinished, a careless oversight on the part of the Reaper. And how many misery-heaped years would it be before that hooded goblin recalled its mistake? How much longer would his brother be forced to lie here in the tomb of his own festering corpse before his tortured mind finally followed? Suddenly Sam saw the fulfillment of his brother's request as his duty, the same humane deed he would grant an animal crushed but not killed in the road.
His fingers found the plug, tightened around it—
And abruptly recoiled, as if the full voltage of the outlet had jumped its restraints and coursed like lightning up his arm. When he looked back at Peter, shame burning in his eyes, Sam was relieved to find that he'd blacked out again.
Feeling like both a coward and a killer, Sam pulled up a chair and sat at the bedside, trying to shut out of his mind the atrocity he'd almost committed.
It was five days before his brother opened his eyes again
FIFTEEN
As with the best of notions, the idea of a drive to the island was a spontaneous one. Friday afternoon, which was overcast, had given way to an evening too glorious by far to be squandered in a theater, and when Will suggested the island as an alternative, Kelly agreed without hesitation. It was an hour's drive through some of the most magnificent countryside the north had to offer. Rolling hills carpeted in dense pine forest, abrupt quartz cliff faces jagging out of the earth, deep saucer-shaped valleys gorged with glacier-blue lake water. Then came the island itself, Manitoulin, a craggy, wedge-shaped hideaway whose sandy south bank faced the oceanic body of Lake Huron and whose every rugged inch lay steeped in Indian folklore. Once there, they would dine at the Inn on the Bay, an intimate lakeside chalet and Kelly's favorite eating spot in the province. Sumptuous Austrian cuisine served at candlelit tables overlooking a deep green gem of a lake. . .
The mere thought of it made Kelly's mouth water, and she could hardly wait to get under way. Responding to some nameless possibility, she threw a few extra items of clothing into a tote bag—just in case. And later, while waiting on the steps, she realized with something like shock that she was happy. Plainly, simply happy, for the first time in too many years.
Will, you bugger, she thought, I'm falling for you.
Absorbed in these thoughts, Kelly basked in the lazy evening, waiting for Will, relishing the sights around her. The westering sun threw out spears of rich golden firelight, setting the treetops ablaze and embroidering the scattered cloud cover with flax; Kelly could feel its heat on her face like a loving hand. The thin haze of August had burned away, leaving a clarity of color that was almost painful to the beholding eye. The lake was a sequined tropical blue, the lawn a rich mossy green; even Chainsaw, scruffy as he was, looked clean and freshly minted as he scuffed his way down the hill. It was as if, overnight, the entire world had been lovingly refurbished, the old varnish scraped away and replaced with a shiny new coat.
Out of this mellow perfection Will's old Buick appeared, rattling good-naturedly down the hill. As it approached the house, a stray sunbeam turned the windshield into a mirror, creating the illusion that the humpbacked antique was unpiloted. Then Will's boyish features materialized behind the glass, his dimpled smile sparkling in the sunlight.
"You hornin' in on my gal?" he said to the shepherd as he climbed out of the car, his tan flight jacket and wash-faded Levi's fitting smoothly into this picture-perfect setting. Chainsaw trotted out to greet him, pressing a wet muzzle into Will's open palm. "Eh, boy? You tryna swipe my gal?" The dog only wagged its tail.
"All set?" Will said, his eyes resting speculatively on Kelly's tote bag before rising to meet hers.
"You bet," Kelly said happily. "Let's boogie."
And they were off, Chainsaw trailing them up the hill.
They had wine with their meal and, afterward, curled together in a love seat in the lake-facing lounge, brandy by a maplewood fire. The alcohol banished Will's sometimes stifling shyness, and before long he was regaling Kelly with tales of his childhood and yarns about his job as a slag-train engineer at the Nickel Ridge smelter. He was a fine, sensitive man, and Kelly found herself increasingly drawn to him. During the drive out from the city, she'd forsaken the picturesque sights and sat cradled in the crook of his arm, allowing herself an almost forgotten feeling of safety. It felt good to have his arm around her.
As the evening progressed and the alcohol lightened her mood, Kelly found herself reflecting on the items she'd stuffed into her tote bag. Along with a fresh change of clothes, she'd packed a gossamer nightie, a long, ghostly thing cut shamelessly high up the thigh and breasted with delicate lace. Apparently undirected, her fingers had snatched up the nightie and buried it deep in the bag. . . but what had her intentions been?