“Oh, yes. We’re dead—”
“—and buried—”
“—and gone to Hell—”
“—and come back again.”
“And now this place is Hell.”
“For you, it is, Susan. For you, for a little while, this is Hell.”
Jellicoe was moving around to the gate, where a section of the countertop lifted to allow passage between the waiting area and the bullpen.
A heavy glass ashtray was on the counter, within Susan’s reach. She finally moved, snatched up the ashtray, and threw it at Jellicoe’s head.
He didn’t just stand there and let the missile pass magically through his body to prove that he was, indeed, a ghost. For a dead man, Jellicoe exhibited a surprisingly healthy fear of being hurt. He ducked behind the counter.
The ashtray missed him, struck the metal desk, cracked apart, and clattered in pieces to the floor.
A long-handled, police-issue flashlight also stood on the counter, and Susan seized that, too. She swung it back over her shoulder, prepared to let it fly at Jellicoe, but out of the corner of her eye, she saw that Herbert Parker was drawing his revolver, so she fled across the waiting area, through the glass doors, into the night.
The boughs of the giant spruce flailed at one another, and the tree’s tens of thousands of green needles were briefly colored silver by a flash of lightning.
Susan ran to the stolen Pontiac and jerked open the door. She got in and reached for the keys, which she had left dangling in the ignition.
The keys were gone.
For you, for a little while, this is Hell.
She glanced toward the glass doors.
Jellicoe and Parker were just coming out of the slumpstone building. They weren’t in a hurry.
Susan slid across the seat, frantically pushed open the door on the passenger’s side, and got out of the car, putting it between her and the two men.
She looked around, determining the best route of escape, hoping that her legs would hold up. Thank God for those physical therapy sessions with Mrs. Atkinson! Otherwise, she wouldn’t have gotten this far. But four days of exercise and good food didn’t mean she was back to full power. Eventually, she would collapse, and that moment would come for her long before it would come for either Jellicoe or Parker.
Above the roar of the rain, above the trumpeting of the wind, Jellicoe called to her. “There’s no use running, Susan.”
“There’s no place to hide!” Parker shouted.
“Fuck you,” she said, and she ran.
16
The house had a welcoming look to it. There was a white picket fence, a shrub-bordered walkway, and a wide front porch with an ornate wooden railing and an old-fashioned porch swing suspended from the rafters. Warm yellow light shone through the lace curtains that covered the downstairs windows.
For a few minutes, Susan stood at the gate in the fence, studying the house, wondering if it was a safe place. She was cold, thoroughly wet, and miserable, and the rain was still coming down hard. She was eager to get inside where it was warm and dry, but she didn’t intend to walk into another trap if she could avoid it; she wanted to feel
right
about the house before she went up to the door, rang the bell, and asked for help.
Go on, she urged herself. Do it. Don’t just stand here. The whole damned town can’t be part of the conspiracy, for God’s sake!
Everyone at the hospital was a part of it, of course, but then it wasn’t a
real
hospital. It was the Milestone Corporation, whatever the hell
that
was.
The police were involved, too, which was outrageous and scary, constituting a stunning setback for her, but she understood how such a thing was possible. Sometimes, in a small town like Willawauk, if one major company totally dominated the economic life of the community—through the jobs it provided and the taxes it paid—then it wielded tremendous power over the local authorities, even to the extent of being able to use the police as a sub rosa enforcement arm for the company’s own purposes and protection. Susan didn’t know for sure that Milestone was
the
employer of note in town, but it clearly had used its influence and a lot of money to corrupt the sheriff’s department. The situation was outlandish, although not unbelievable.
But that was where the conspiracy ended, surely. Milestone, all of its employees, and the police were part of it; all right, she could accept that much. Already, however, the size of the conspiracy was unwieldy. It couldn’t possibly encompass anyone else without starting to unravel at the seams. By their very nature, conspiracies could not include
thousands
of people.
Nevertheless, she stood in the rain by the gate, studying the house, envying the people who were warm and dry inside—and fearing them, too.
She was three blocks from the sheriff’s offices. She had gotten away from Jellicoe and Parker with little trouble, running down alleyways, staying in the shadows, darting from tree to tree across several lawns.
In fact, now that she thought about it, avoiding Jellicoe and Parker had been too easy. Like finding the keys in the Pontiac when she needed a car. With good reason, she had come to distrust easy escapes.
An exceptionally brilliant flash of lightning briefly transformed the night into day. Rain began falling harder than ever, and it seemed colder, too.
That was enough to propel Susan through the gate and up the walk to the front porch. She rang the bell.
She didn’t see what else she could do. She had nowhere else to go, no one to turn to except strangers chosen at random from all the houses full of strangers on all these strange, rain-scoured streets.
The porch light came on.
Susan smiled and tried to appear harmless. She knew that she must look wild: waterlogged, her hair curled into tight ringlets and tangled in knots by the rain and the wind, her face still somewhat emaciated, her eyes stark and haunted. She was afraid of presenting such a bad image that people would be discouraged from opening their doors to her. A tremulous smile was not enough to make her look like the Welcome Wagon lady, but it was all she could offer.
Happily, the door opened, and a woman peered out, blinking in surprise. She was in her middle or late forties, a cherub-faced brunette with a pixie-style haircut. She didn’t even wait for Susan to speak, but said, “Good gracious, whatever are you doing out on a night like this, without an umbrella or a raincoat? Is something wrong?”
“I’ve had some trouble,” Susan said. “I was—”
“Car trouble?” the brunette asked, but she didn’t wait for an answer. She was a bubbly, outgoing woman, and she seemed to have been waiting for someone who had an ear that needed talking off. “Oh, don’t they just always break down in weather like this! Never on a sunny day in June. Always at night and always in a storm. And never when you can find a mechanic or when you have change for a pay phone. You’ll be wanting to know if you can use our phone. That’s it, isn’t it? Well, of course, of course. Come in here where it’s warm, call whoever you want. And I think I’ll make you some hot coffee. By the look of you, you’ll need something hot if you’re going to stave off pneumonia.” She stepped aside so that Susan could enter.
Startled by the woman’s unreserved hospitality and by her nonstop chatter, Susan said, “Well... uh ... I’m dripping.”
“Won’t hurt a thing. We’ve got a dark carpet—have to with the kids. Just imagine what they’d do to a
white
carpet—and it’s an Antron Plus fiber, which means it just
won’t
take a stain no matter how hard the little devils try. Besides, you’re only dripping rainwater, not spaghetti sauce or chocolate syrup. A little rain isn’t going to hurt it. Come in, come in.”
Susan went inside, and the woman closed the door. They were standing in a cozy foyer. The flower-patterned wallpaper was too busy for Susan’s taste, but it wasn’t unattractive. A small table stood against one wall of the foyer; a brass-framed mirror hung above the table; an arrangement of dried flowers stood on the table, in front of the mirror.
A television set was playing in another room. It was tuned to an action show; tires squealed; people shouted; guns blazed; dramatic music swelled.
“My name’s Enid,” the brunette said. “Enid Shipstat.”
“I’m Susan Thorton.”
“You know, Susan, you should always carry an umbrella in your car, even when it doesn’t look like it’s going to rain, just in case something like this happens. An umbrella and a flashlight and a first-aid kit. Ed—that’s my hubby—he also keeps a little tire pump in the trunk, a little electric model that plugs right into the cigarette lighter, so if you get a flat that’s caused by a slow leak or a puncture, then you can reinflate it long enough to get to a gas station. That way you don’t have to change the tire yourself, out on the road, in bad weather, maybe in the middle of a storm like this. But good heavens, this isn’t the time to talk about being a good girl scout, is it? What in the world is wrong with me? Here I am offering you all sorts of unsolicited advice, when you’re standing there shaking like a leaf. Sometimes I think my mouth isn’t wired up to my brain. Come on back to the kitchen. That’s probably the warmest room in the house, and I can brew you up some good hot coffee. There’s a phone in the kitchen, too.”
Susan decided to wait until she’d had a few sips of coffee before explaining that her plight didn’t involve car trouble. She followed Enid Shipstat into a narrow hall, where the only light was that spilling in from the foyer and a bluish TV glow that came from the living room, on the right.
As they passed the living-room archway, Susan almost stopped and gaped in surprise at the sight beyond the arch. It was a relatively normal American living room, arranged around the TV as most American living rooms were, but it was overfurnished with chairs and sofas—and with children. A dozen kids ringed the television, sitting on the furniture and on the floor, all intently watching the softly glowing screen, which provided, along with one small lamp, the only light in the room. A dozen heads turned as if they were all part of a single organism, and a dozen young faces looked expressionlessly at Susan for a moment, eyes shining with reflected TV light, then turned to the screen again when their attention was drawn by a burst of gunfire and the wail of a police siren. Their rapt silence and their blank expressions were eerie.
“I only have Hills Brothers,” Enid said as she led Susan down the hall toward the kitchen. “That’s the only kind of coffee Ed will drink. Personally, I like Folger’s just as well, but Ed thinks it’s not as mellow as Hills Brothers, and he just can’t
stand
that Mrs. Olsen on the commercials. He says she reminds him of a busybody old schoolteacher he once had.”
“Anything you’ve got is fine,” Susan said.
“Well, like I told you, all we have is just Hills Brothers, I’m afraid, so I hope you like Hills Brothers.”
“That’ll be fine.”
Susan wondered how the Shipstats managed to raise a dozen children in this simple, two-story house. It was a fairly large place, but not
that
large. The bedrooms would have to be organized like army barracks, with sets of bunk beds, at least four kids to a room.
As Enid Shipstat pushed open the swinging kitchen door, Susan said, “You’ve got quite a family.”
“You
see
why we don’t have a white carpet?” Enid said, and she laughed.
They stepped into the kitchen, a brightly lit room with clean yellow ceramic-tile counters and white cabinets with yellow porcelain knobs on the doors and drawers.
A young man was sitting sideways to the door, his elbows propped on the kitchen table, his head buried in his hands, bent over a large textbook.
“That’s Tom, my oldest boy,” Enid said with pride. “He’s in his senior year at college, always studying. He’s going to be a rich lawyer some day, and then he’s going to support his poor old mom and dad in luxury. Isn’t that right, Tom?” She winked at Susan to show that she was only kidding.
Tom took his hands down from his face, raised his head, and looked at Susan.
It was Ernest Harch.
Madness
, Susan thought, her heart lurching into high gear.
Sheer madness.