The Keep (20 page)

Danny wanted to stand. He actually said it out loud: Stand the fuck up. But he couldn’t move. His heart was beating so hard he thought he might puke.

Was he seeing the twins? Was he watching them die? It seemed violent, whatever this was, like one person shoving another person. Or someone shoving both of them.

Apart. Together. Push. A long ripple under the water and then a splash against the marble. Each splash a little bigger than the last one.

Run,
said a voice in Danny.
Get out of here!

Danny: I don’t run. I never run. I’m not afraid. But his heart was grinding, and there was ice in his chest.

The water in the pool was starting to shake. It trembled, vibrated in tiny ripples like something huge was coming up from underneath.

Danny stood up.
This can’t be real. This isn’t real. I don’t believe this is happening.
What he saw was the water opening up, a hole coming open in the water like a mouth or a tunnel or a grave, some dark cavity that made a little thread of puke jump up in Danny’s throat.
It’s not real, I’m hallucinating. It’s all in my head so there’s nothing to be scared of.
And below that, another voice, raw and terrified:
I don’t want to see. Run, run!

The hole in the water caved in, spreading wider and wider until the pool
was
the hole, a round black opening that looked like it led straight down to the center of the earth, its molten core. A sound came out of the hole—Danny barely heard it at first because it was one of those hums that could just be your own ears ringing, but the hum got louder every second until it was a roar, a howl, a scream—some horrible noise that filled up Danny’s ears and then shorted them out so all he heard was buzzing. That was when the words
gripping sleep
and
grabbing sleep
popped into Danny’s head, and all of a sudden he understood, his body jolted from the impact of figuring it out.
I’m not awake! This is all a dream; I’ve been dreaming this whole time. The gripping sleep has got hold of me and it’s showing me all kinds of shit that looks real but it’s all just a dream, it’s all inside my head.

Yeah, but what’s real? came a familiar voice close to Danny’s ear but somehow outside him, outside the pool, all of it. You’re having an experience, right? said the voice. You’re going through it, right?

Danny smelled mint. It filled the air around the pool, zinging and pricking Danny’s eyes. And he realized that the new voice was Howard’s voice. Howard was here! He was nearby, inches away, which meant that Danny
wasn’t
here—he was lying in bed, and Howard was in the chair next to the bed, just like before. Danny hadn’t ever come outside, hadn’t even moved. He was dreaming.

He shut his eyes to close out the roaring pool, which wasn’t real. He set his mind on Howard’s voice and minty breath outside the skin of the grabbing sleep. He felt like he was about to cry.

Danny: Howard, help. I’m all fucked up.

You’re doing fine, buddy. Just hang in there.

Danny: I’m scared.

No shame in that. We all get scared.

Please wake me up. Please.

I can’t, Danny.

Danny heard something that sounded like laughing, or at least other people. Was it the graduate students? Were they all in the room together?

Danny: Please, Howard. There’s got to be a way. Belt me, kick me across the fucking room. I don’t care, just wake me up.

More noise. Definitely it was laughing, Howard too. Missed that one, Danny. Come again?

Danny’s teeth were clamped together. Please. Wake me up.

Oh, I can’t, buddy. This is too much fun.

What?

I’m enjoying this. Tell me what it’s like, Danny. Tell me everything. How does it feel to be scared out of your mind with no one to help you?

The cold hit Danny in a body shock, a squirt of fear that was the same as what he’d felt in the garden—something bad around him, nearby him. And Danny knew what it was: Howard.

It was all Howard.

Please, Danny whispered, his eyes shut tight. Help.

You want help? More laughter. C’mon, buddy. I’m nice, but not that nice.

Please.

The mint was strong in Danny’s face—Howard must be leaning close. Danny felt the heat coming off his cousin’s skin. Drops of someone’s sweat fell on his cheeks and eyelids. Howard’s voice seemed to come from inside Danny’s ear.

You’re scared? You want my help? That’s a lot to ask, you cold fucker. You vicious sonofabitch.

Danny shrieked and opened his eyes. He was standing by the pool. It was a pool again, thousands of raindrops tapping on its surface. Rain ran from Danny’s hair down over his face. And having things back to normal brought back the rational part of him that had been on ice for a while now, erased by his fear:
It was all a dream, even Howard was part of the dream.
This
is real. This rain, this pool. Nothing but this.

Then thunder exploded and lightning broke the sky, and the terror clamped on Danny again. He started to run, bolted blind through the cypress and dove into the underbrush, stumbling through twigs that snapped back, scratching his face, raking his skin. He tripped over a root and landed face-first, a brassy taste of dirt filling up his mouth. Now the rain was pounding Danny, soaking his bandages until they were heavy on his head, gushing into his eyes and nose so he choked on it. But Danny kept running even if running made no sense. That was the one thing every part of him agreed on—running made no sense—but he was too scared to stop. There was a riot inside Danny’s head, the spooked and rational parts of him fighting it out in a way most of us would recognize, except it didn’t happen like I’m going to write it, piece by piece like a conversation. It was a knot, a confusion, a chaos in Danny’s head:

He brought me here to torture me. To punish me.

Don’t believe it. This is the worm.

He’s hated me all his life.

You’re letting in the worm. Don’t!

He wants me to die.

Shut it out—if you push it back you can still keep it out.

He wants me to lose my mind. This whole thing is a setup to make me lose my mind.

Bullshit. Bullshit. You’re losing it on your own, you’re making all this happen on your own.

From the very beginning it was him. Maybe even falling out the window—maybe that was him.

Impossible crap and you know it.

Now my brain is damaged, there’s something wrong with my brain. It’s the gripping sleep, the grabbing sleep.

It’s the worm.

The graduate students are in on it, too.

The worm.

And Mick and Ann—they all want to wipe me out.

You’re pulling that worm inside you. You’re sucking it in. It’s a choice. You’re making this happen.

I need to get away from here. Away from the castle.

That’s not going to solve a thing.

I’ll run away. I’ll get a plane back to New York. All I can do now is try to get out alive.

There’s no place to go. The worm is inside you, Danny. It’s
in
you.

Help!

Help yourself.

Help! Help!
Danny hollered this out, screamed it into the night, as he stumbled toward the castle through the rain.

Danny got out by climbing over a broken wall—the same one he’d climbed from the outside to look at the view on his first night. Obviously there were better ways to exit the castle, but finding one of those would mean asking someone, and no way did Danny want Howard to know he was leaving.

He left behind most of his stuff. Taking it with him would be slow, not to mention obvious. When he walked out the door of his room the next day his clothes were still in the big medieval dresser and the Samsonite was empty in the closet. All Danny brought along was a shoulder bag stuffed with three pairs of underwear, two extra shirts, deodorant, toothbrush, toothpaste, hair mousse (optimistic, since his head was still bandaged), and socks. In his jacket pocket he had his passport, three hundred bucks, and one working credit card with about five hundred left on it. Somehow, that combination was going to have to get him back to New York.

Now I should back up here, because quite a few hours have passed since Danny was getting rained on out in the garden, and someone’s got to be wondering: (1) Was he ever really outside, or was it all just a dream? (2) Has he seen Howard since he got back (or dreamed he got back) to the castle? (3) Which part of Danny won the argument, the part that blamed everything on Howard or the part that blamed the worm? And I wish I knew how to sprinkle these answers around so you’d get the information without even noticing how you got it, but I don’t. So I’ll just stick them in when the time seems right.

Danny headed down the hall between the rows of electric candles. He was careful to walk, not hobble [
Answer number
1:
It wasn’t all a dream, because the only footwear Danny had to his name was one left boot and one right sandal (he must’ve dropped the other sandal while he was running), which meant he
had
been outside, not in his bed. Which also meant Howard hadn’t really been sitting by Danny’s bed making nasty comments into his ear. But to Danny, finding this out didn’t change much of anything. It was like dreaming you’ve fucked someone and not being able to look at them the next day: Danny saw Howard a different way. It made him get what he should have gotten from the very start: that Howard’s niceness, his reasons for bringing Danny over here, were too good to be true—were bullshit. A cover-up for something else.], in case someone saw him, although it was noon, and pretty soon everyone would be heading into the great hall to eat some tomatoey thing with plenty of garlic that Howard had been cooking all morning. It smelled unbelievably good.

Danny passed a big gold mirror, but he avoided looking in it. He was wearing a sock under his sandal to keep stuff from touching his toes, but he had a hatred of how sandals looked with socks and some pretty strong beliefs about the kind of loser who
wore
sandals with socks, so he wasn’t especially keen to see he’d become that kind of loser himself. Not to mention the way he must look from the neck up. Danny knew it was bad from the expression on Howard’s face. [
Answer number
2:
Howard came into his room that morning at around six with the bearded guy who’d given Danny the injection. Howard smiled at Danny (who was lying in bed wide awake) from the doorway and then the smile froze on his face and he charged over.

Howard: What the fuck happened in here?

Danny: Nothing happened.

Howard: Your face is all cut up.

If Danny didn’t know what he knew—that Howard had brought him over here to mess with his head—he would have bought this act completely because it was fantastic. A virtuoso performance of being worried. (
Answer number
3,
sorry to stick this one smack in the middle of number 2 but that’s where it fits: The voices in Danny’s brain went back and forth on who his real enemy was, Howard or the worm. The debate came down to this:

Howard.

The worm.

Howard.

The worm. until Danny reached a kind of frenzy and it all started running together: Howard The worm Howard The worm Howard The worm and finally: HowardthewormHowardthewormHowardtheworm. And that glob of words gave Danny his answer. The loop collapsed: it wasn’t Howard
or
the worm, Howard
was
the worm. They weren’t opposites, they were one thing, one evil terrifying thing that had waited years to catch up with him. And Danny had felt it there. All that time he’d sensed it waiting—even named it—without ever knowing who it was.)

Danny: I couldn’t sleep, so I went outside to get some air.

Howard: You went
outside
? Are you crazy, Danny? Did I not explain what kind of—

He stopped. He took a long breath and ran his hands through his hair. His voice got quiet and angry: I knew I should have slept in here. I knew it. Doc, look at this. He went outside last night and look what happened to him.

Danny: Relax, Howard. It’s a few scrapes.

Howard stared at him wild-eyed. You don’t get it, Danny. I must not’ve explained this right. You have a—ah, fuck it. He sat down heavily on the chair by Danny’s bed.

The doctor came over and took Danny’s head between his small cool hands.

Howard: He’s here to change your bandages. Which look like shit, by the way.

Danny: They got rained on.

Howard shook his head. The doctor went straight to work, unwrapping the bandages from Danny’s head and lifting them away, scattering water and blood and pus, with a pair of tongs. Howard stood close, watching every move. Judging from his expression, it wasn’t pretty.

Howard: Is he…okay?

The doctor said something Danny couldn’t understand. Howard gestured at Danny’s head and spoke louder. Is he okay, Doctor? Should it—should it look like that?

Doctor: Ya, ya. Is okay.

The doctor squeezed some ointment from a tube over the top of Danny’s head and tapped it down with his bare fingers. Danny felt the pressure of the doctor’s hands on his skull, but not his scalp. It was too numb. The doctor wrapped a fresh white bandage around the top half of Danny’s head. For some reason, it hurt less after that.]