Hugo & Rose (31 page)

Suddenly, the lowest head shot out and seized the first crying twin, driving the boy into its mouth. A small morsel. A flash of blond hair was visible for a moment between the folds of its maw. And then the boy was gone.

The screaming finally began.

Mothers and children were suddenly everywhere, leaping off the play structures, knocking one another off swings. Screams of “Mommy!” rang out from dozens of throats … the same name for so many different women.

The youngest among the children were frozen in place, screaming with tears but unable to command their legs to move. Women were running into the fray from all over the park, the sand shooting up from their scrabbling feet.

Blindhead angled from the ground and whipped itself onto the monkey bars.

Rose tore her eyes from the snake.

Penny was gone.

Through the legs of the women, Rose could make out the bucket and shovel Penny had co-opted lying abandoned on the sand on the other side of the playground.

On the other side of the monster.

Rose burst into a run, screaming Penny's name. She ducked under a structure—the small hideaway fort—then followed the path through.

“Penny!… Penny!”

The sun shining through the plastic tunnel above revealed the snake's still heads, tongues waving above the shape of a little girl. The shadows sat poised, waiting for movement.

Rose watched from below as the shadow of the child tried to pull herself out of its reach. The plastic resounded, betraying her with a dull thud.

There was a scream and the sound of denim sliding against plastic.

Rose pushed herself out into the open as the topmost head pulled the girl out—a snail from its shell. The force of the movement snapped the child's spine and suddenly her cries ceased. It held her flaccid body aloft a moment.

If possible, the pitch of the screaming crowd got even louder.

The creature dislocated its jaw, swallowing the girl whole, as Rose spotted Penny.

Her daughter was sitting on the sand by the swings, oblivious to the violence around her, pulling a moat around herself with her chubby hands. Her movements were broad and wide. An easy target.

Rose broke into a run as Blindhead's body turned toward Penny's movement. It was lightning quick, slithering from the structure behind Rose—

Alighting right above Pen.

Rose dove into the sand, her arms reaching out for Penny just as one of the creature's jaws closed around her small body and lifted her upward.

Rose screamed as a second head joined it, biting into the soft flesh of Penny's lower half.

Momma? Okay, Momma?

Rose looked down.

Penny was sitting across from her, a look of concern in her large eyes. “You okay, Momma?”

Rose was sprawled out across the hot sand, her arms outreached around Penny's spread knees.

All around the playground, mothers and children were staring at her. Watching. Stock-still. Alarmed by her strange behavior.

*   *   *

“I was awake, Josh. I was completely awake.”

Rose paced on the phone. Her heart was thumping.

She must have looked like an idiot running through the playground. Screaming Penny's name. Rose imagined what the other mothers must have seen, no idea of the horror that was unspooling before her eyes.

It had been so real.

So,
so real.

“Sometimes the brain…” Josh's voice on the phone sounded careful. As though he were picking his words. “Given enough sleep deprivation, the brain will give itself little naps. Microsleeps.”

Rose winced as she remembered the sound of the little girl's spine as it snapped above her. The image of Penny's shoulders disappearing into Blindhead's mouth.

“I can't do this much longer. I feel like I'm breaking. But if I fall asleep…”

Josh was quiet on the phone. Rose could hear the change in his breath, his lips pursing. “I'll get the Klonopin.”

Josh had that dark sound. Rose could tell he was going to do something he considered wrong. Bully someone into giving it to him. Steal it from somewhere. Lie.

She didn't care. She needed sleep.

Sleep without nightmares.

Sleep without Hugo.

“I love you, Rose.”

“I love you, too.”

The room tone on the other end went dead. Josh was setting about his task. It was almost over. Josh would do what he needed to do to get her the drugs. Tonight she would go to sleep with the buffer of the antiepileptics stifling her brain, no matter what—

The sound of the front door slamming against its frame echoed through the house. The familiar refrain of the boys getting home from school.

“Adam! Isaac! I told you! No slamming the door!”

Her head felt so heavy.

She could sense Zackie standing right next to her. The smell of him. “Sorry, Mom.”

Rose's brain ran an auditory loop of the sounds it had just registered.
Door slam. Footsteps. Door slam. Footsteps. Door slam. Footsteps.

Something was missing.

She looked up. Isaac stood in the kitchen, his backpack still on his shoulders.

There had been the sound of only one pair of small feet.

“Where is Adam?”

Isaac shrugged. “He wasn't on the bus.”

 

twenty-two

A dribble of ice cream broke across Adam's knuckle.

He licked it off, his tongue catching paper, cone, and soft serve in the same sweep. He would have to eat it a little faster not to make a mess in Mr. David's car. He didn't want Mr. David to think that he was a baby who didn't know how to eat an ice-cream cone. Someone who didn't know how not to make a mess. He was a good boy. A big boy.

He was such a big boy that Mr. David even let him sit in the front seat, without a booster or anything.

It was awesome.

Adam was so lucky he had seen Mr. David waving across the street from where the buses all lined up. Mrs. H, the bus monitor, had been talking to a teacher and some new crying girl and had not seen Adam step out of the line and step behind the bus to shout hello to Mommy's friend.

Then Mr. David had curled his hand, telling him to cross the street.

Adam had hesitated. He wasn't supposed to do that on his own yet.

But Mr. David, who had told him he was actually Hugo, seemed to think it was fine. He looked both ways and then curled his hand again. Adam took that as permission and he had jogged across the street as fast as he could. He felt giddy when he reached the other side. A sense that he had done something big. Crossed the street by himself! Something big boys do.

Mr. David told him he'd asked his mommy for permission to take Addy on an adventure. Would Adam like that?

Oh yes, please, and thank you very, very much, please.

And now they were in Mr.-David-who-was-Hugo's car on their way to a movie. And Adam had gotten a Happy Meal and an ice-cream cone, but he got to eat the ice-cream cone first because otherwise it would melt, and it wouldn't be there when he was done with his hamburger.

It was awesome.

And it was even better because it was just him … no Isaac. If Isaac had been there, it would be
him
in the front seat. He would be telling Addy not to let the ice cream drip, even if Adam was already being careful about it.

Addy felt special. Big. Good.

Outside, the highway rolled by and Adam could make out the full sweep of it from where he sat. The dash of Mr. David's car was really cool, with lots of knobs instead of buttons. Adam's fingers itched to turn them, but he knew that was something grown-ups didn't like, so he held himself back. The car was shorter than Mom's car. Closer to the ground. He could feel the vibration of the tires under his feet.

Adam decided the car was also his favorite color, blue. Sometimes his favorite color changed … but today it was definitely blue.

And it smelled good. A sweet plastic smell, kinda melty and old. Adam liked it.

Mr. David was quiet as he drove. He told Adam that the radio didn't work so they would have to talk to keep themselves entertained, and would that be okay? Adam said that it was. He wanted to talk to Mr. David about what it was like to be Hugo … but instead Mr. David had gotten quiet and kinda drifty, like grown-ups do when they think about things.

Adam took another big lick of his ice cream and snuck a look at him. There were some purple and yellow marks on his face. His cheek and jaw looked sore and puffy. When Adam had asked, he had said he had got the black eye from falling down. Adam had kinda quirked up his mouth at that. Mr. David's eyes didn't look black at all.

Musta been quite a fall, though.

Maybe when Mr. David took him home after the movie he could get his mommy to kiss Mr. David's face. That sort of thing always made him feel better when he was hurt, even though Isaac said it made him a baby and it didn't
really
do anything. Adam wasn't quite sure about that. He always felt that the pain did go away a little bit whenever his mommy kissed his hurts. Maybe she could make Mr. David feel better.

He would like that.

As they drove, Adam thought about his Lego map … he would have to remember to check that Mommy hadn't gotten rid of it when he got home, too. After he asked her to kiss Mr. David's owies.

But, of course, it would still be there. Adam was silly to worry. Because Mommy had sent Mr. David to have an adventure with him—and Mr. David
was
Hugo. She wouldn't take away Adam's Hugo toys but then send Hugo to play with him. That would just be goofy.

Adam pushed the remains of the cone out of its paper holder. He popped it into his mouth, the liquid ice cream seeping from the gummy remnants in between his teeth. He wondered if Mr. David would let him get popcorn
and
candy
and
a soda with the movie.

Adam thought he probably would.

*   *   *

“Please, I just … I need someone to help.”

“Ma'am, I'm still not clear. Is your son missing or do you know who has him?”

“He's…” There wasn't time to explain. “Both. He's both.”

The 911 dispatcher sounded irritated, her voiced edged with efficiency. Rose imagined her in a dark room, in the cool lights of a monitor. A million miles from Rose and her missing son. A million miles from the chaos that was breaking out in her life. Josh had not picked up his cell. The hospital was paging him. The school bus monitor had marked Adam as getting on the bus—but someone in the main office would be speaking to her.

Rose's body was thrumming with adrenaline. Her skin was puckering and releasing in waves of gooseflesh. She wanted to run. She wanted to punch someone. But she could not do anything until she got through this godforsaken phone call.

“Have you tried calling your friend to see if he has him?”

“He's not…” Rose swallowed the words
my friend.
He
was
her friend. The man she had invited into their life. This was all her fault.

She thinks you're crazy. You probably sound crazy. Bipolar. Like one of those schizos who tears off her clothes and jumps into bushes. All those mothers saw you freak out at the playground. Screaming.

Maybe you are crazy.

Rose tried to modulate her voice, to make it sound sane. “Please, my son should be home by now.…”

The police would come. They would talk to her. They would see her … and how crazy she looked. And then they'd talk to the neighbors. By now everyone on the block would have heard about the playground. And then the police would think
she
had done something to her Addy. That she had hurt him. Hidden him.

Rose's throat ached with a stifled sob.
She
had
hurt him. She had brought Hugo here.

Rose looked up.

In the rounded archway that marked the transition between the living room and kitchen stood a trio of Bucks. The animals placidly raised their heads and regarded her with their still, dark eyes.… As if she were the intruder.

“Ma'am, are you still there?”

No. Yes. Maybe. I am here. But I am also somewhere else. I am on an island I have been dreaming of for almost my entire life … and I am in my kitchen begging you to believe me that someone has stolen my son.

The Bucks lowered their heads back to the ground, browsing on invisible grass that sprouted from the wood floor of her kitchen.

Rose hung up the phone.

She would call Mrs. D to come over. Tell Isaac to let her in when she got here.

*   *   *

Mr. David had driven them for a long time until they got to the movie theater. It was one of those big ones they built on the edge of town. Adam knew that the numbers next to the movie theater names meant how many screens they had. The one his mom and dad took him to was an eight. The place he went to when he visited his baba and papa was a twelve.

This one was a thirty-two, the number huge and red on the sign that stood by the highway. Behind it the sun was pink and orange on the mountains. Sunset. Adam had a funny tickly feeling … he was going to get to stay up late. On a school night.

Mr. David pressed through the parking lot without holding Adam's hand. Addy doubled his steps to keep up. Maybe Mr. David didn't know they were supposed to hold hands when they were around cars.

Or maybe he just thought Adam was a big boy who didn't
need
to hold hands. Maybe he thought he was big enough to do it by himself.

If that was the case, Addy wasn't going to make him think he was a baby by reaching out for his hand. Mr. David said he was
Hugo
 … Hugo killed Spiders the size of cars and climbed mountains and had his own submarine. He wouldn't want someone like that to think he wasn't big enough to cross a parking lot on his own.

Adam followed him up over the clean curb of the complex. There was a huge wall of digital movie listings and times. Mr. David gave him a tight smile as he bought the tickets. Adam smiled back at him.