Time Release (27 page)

That she tried to kill him—in a basement laundry sink then, and now with a poisoned orange—left him mostly numb. He knew by Jim Christensen's reaction what was in that orange. When it had really sunk in, he was alone in the house on Jancey, alone with remembered horrors in the place where he'd lived them. He shouldn't have ditched Christensen, just like he shouldn't have jammed the Ex­plorer into four-wheel drive with his good hand and roared across town, past the snow-stranded drivers on Green Tree Hill. He shouldn't have bumped down an unpaved hillside and into a vacant lot when a semi skidded sideways and blocked the Ridgeville exit. But he needed to get off.

Having done all that, why was he here?

The Explorer's engine was still ticking, the driver's door open, as he started up the steps. The truck's interior was a bubble of pale yellow in the dark parking lot. All the way here, he'd imagined this scene. Moving up the stairs. Knocking. Waiting for her to scissor open the curtains and start unlocking the door. But then it stopped. He couldn't imagine the scene beyond that point, just as he couldn't avoid confronting the woman on the other side, whoever she was. Everything in his past was drawing him to his mother's doorstep, to this moment. That much he knew.

“It's me,” he said to the dark eyes inside. He held his breath as she worked the locks.

The door chain caught and she peeked out the gap. A puff of warm, stale air. “Saturday already? Oh goodness, Sonny. It's nighttime. I'm a mess. My hair. My teeth aren't brushed. I'm not dressed. Can you come back?”

“Just open up.”

“It's just that I'm—”

“Open the goddamned thing.” He backed away two steps, then rushed forward and buried his shoulder into the door. It sprung open with a sharp wooden crack as pain shot through his fractured hand. While what was left of the chain lock swung like an off-balance pendulum, he stepped inside. All he saw was the hem of her flannel nightgown as she rounded the corner and disappeared from view. Somewhere in the warren of small rooms, a door closed. The apartment was still and dark except for the endless chatter and ghostly blue glow from her TV. On top of the TV, the silhouette of a video camera he'd never seen before.

Sonny crossed the living room in three steps. A short hallway to his left led to the bedroom. The breakfast area was straight ahead, and a wide arch to the right opened into the kitchen. “I came to talk,” he said, turning right. He'd been sure she went that way, but the kitchen was empty. Where could she be?

“Bad day, Sonny.” From the bedroom. Sonny whipped around, disoriented by his miscalculation.

“I'm not leaving,” he said, “not until I say what I came to say.” What had he come to say?

“Please come back. I can't. Not right now.”

Sonny turned on a light and surveyed the kitchen. It was spotless. The small table was bare, the floor gleamed, the sink was emptied of the dirty dishes that usually collected there. The only disorder was a section of the counter between the sink and the refrigerator where she'd ready stacked the remnants of some indefinable project— transparent red cellophane like that used in gift baskets, pale straw, scissors, tape, ribbon. A bag of oranges and two grapefruit sat on the windowsill nearby.

He felt like puking. As careless as his mother was about cleaning, there were times when she was practically obsessive about neatness. Why hadn't he noticed it before? In the room's weird tidiness, he felt another presence.

“I'm not going anywhere,” he called. “There's a story I want to hear, and I want to hear it from you. You owe me that.”

She didn't answer, so he went to her bedroom door. The hallway was narrow and dark, its walls bare. The overhead light fixture was missing. Its wires dangled from a ragged hole in the ceiling. He tried the doorknob.

Her voice, soft but panicked: “Please go.”

“Unlock the door.”

“You're scaring me, Sonny. What do you want?”

Then it came clear, as sharp and sudden as a needle prick. He knew why he'd come: “I want to talk to Rachel.” Sonny waited, closing his eyes and laying his forehead against the door.

“She's gone,” his mother said.

“She's here!” Sonny screamed. “She wants me dead! Open the fucking door!” He crashed against it with his shoulder, screaming from the pain, but it held. He tried again, and lightning exploded behind his eyes. When the pain subsided, he leaned back and kicked again and again with his bloody shoe until he lost his balance, then tried to kick the knob loose as he fell onto his broken hand. He felt himself plunge into a prickly fog, but struggled to stay conscious.

Had he? He wasn't sure. He'd somehow ended up with his knees gathered to his chest, slumped against the wall opposite his mother's bedroom door. Why was he crying? Then it drifted back to him.

“Who the fuck are you?” Sonny said.

Nothing.

He said it again, but his voice was starting to fade. Rage was draining from him in spurts, like blood from a neat arterial wound.

“Damn you,” Sonny whispered. Even as he said it his voice dissolved into a sad whimper. He didn't care anymore. He'd seen everything, knew everything; the secrets of his past were laid bare. Now he felt empty. Even the white-hot burning in his right hand began to fade. He thought of the poisoned orange, wishing he had eaten it. Better, he wished he had died years before, thrashing against cold water and cold metal and merciless hands in a rusting basement tub.

“I remember,” he said, every scar alive now. But he also remembered how he'd survived. How he'd retreat down his throat, to the warm and safe place inside. The storms outside could rage and batter him, but it didn't matter. Sonny drew his knees tighter, protecting himself. Ride it out, he thought. Obey. Submit.

The door popped open, an inch at first, then two more. The bedroom was darker than the hall, and from it came the rasp of a pack-a-day smoker: “Hello, Sonny.”

His whimpers became sobs. He closed his eyes again. “Bitch,” he rallied.

“Let it out, Sonny boy,” it croaked. “Everybody's got a breaking point.”

He pressed himself against the wall. It was hard, unmoving, offering no escape. Then, in an instant, Sonny was swimming, surfacing from a dive into the icy Ohio, still safe inside the hard shell of his bloodless skin: He focused on his stroke, on the seamless arm-over-arm rhythm that carried him away. He felt better, strong, but not strong enough. Whatever was behind him, the presence he'd felt in a hundred water dreams, had finally closed the gap. It was too powerful, too fast, close enough to touch and speak to him in its sandpapery voice.

“There, there,” it soothed. “We're almost done.”

“Yes.” The word came in a sob, his voice distant.

“Yes, Sonny boy,” it said. “We'll go where they can't find us, just like we planned. David's there. He stopped us last time, delayed our destiny. No one can stop us now.”

His brother. Sonny saw David standing at the base of the cellar stairs, his father's pistol in one wavering hand, ordering her to let him go. He gasped, the taste of death suddenly at the back of his throat. “He came back from the pharmacy too soon,” Sonny said, choking. “We were almost there. Almost to God.”

A husky sigh from behind the door. “That policeman, that therapist, they never understood. I worked so hard to keep your daddy alive, dangling him between life and death. Purgatory on earth! Alive, Sonny, but tortured. Despised! I created that for him, sentenced him to it. Those who interfere must be winnowed from the floor.”

“Winnowed,” Sonny repeated.

“You tried to help them, didn't you, Sonny boy? They asked you to help, and you did. You'll have to be purified before we go. It has to be done. You remember our prayer, don't you? Sonny boy?”

“John the Baptist,” he said. “‘There is one to come who is mightier than I. His winmowing-fan is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and gather the wheat into his bam; but the chaff he will burn in unquenchable fire.'”

“Good. Very good. I've winnowed the chaff, Sonny. Your friends won't bother us again. We can go now. We can. It's right. It's beautiful. Your daddy will burn in the lake of fire for the rest of his days, and we'll go, the rest of us, where no one will follow. My will be done.”

“Your will be done,” Sonny said.

The door creaked. Sonny opened his eyes. Looming above him, naked except for a white bedsheet around her shoulders, was a woman who seemed much taller than his mother. She stood like royalty, not stooped or manic or desperately sad, but still and regal, the sheet clasped to her breast like a risen saint. Her feet, too, were bare, and Sonny slowly lifted his head to meet her eyes. They were alive, penetrating. He felt them boring into his soul.

“Rachel.” He curled even deeper into himself, fetal now, moving inside a body that no longer seemed to matter.

“It's time,” she rasped. “Come with me to the font.”

The cab's headlights swept across the peeling plywood sign for Lakeview Pointe Estates. The driver stopped and studied the steep driveway. A single set of tracks, straight and steady, scarred the foot-deep blanket of snow leading to the apartment building at the top of the rise.

“No fucking way, chief,” the driver said. “Somebody made it, but you can bet your hairy left nut they had four-wheel drive. Youn's're on your own from here.”

“You're sure this is the place?” Christensen said.

“You wanna debate it? I'll set the meter.”

Christensen stepped out and slammed the door. His loafers weren't suited to a climb like this, but what choice did he have? He started up, sidestepping, digging the edges of his soles into a hard-packed tread track he recognized from a familiar set of Firestones.

The Explorer was sitting sideways in the middle of the parking lot, like it had been left where it skidded to a sudden stop. The driver's door was open, the interior light on. He scanned the apartment building, looking for the second-floor door that said 2B. When he saw it, nearly dark and lifeless, he started toward the concrete stairs. Then he stopped, went back to the Explorer, and reached under the driver's seat. Brenna's gun was icy cold. He held it up to the ashen light, wondering if it had a safety. He found a tiny, gnarled button and slid it to the left, breathing easier when the gun didn't go off. His hand was shaking. Could he pull the trigger if he had to?

Across the dark plain toward Ridgeville, he'd seen no sign of approaching headlights. The roads were as uninhabited as they were unplowed. Even I-79, which he could see in the distance, was a vast desolate ribbon lit orange by PennDOT's towering lights. Not a single driver dared brave it. Do cop cars carry chains, he wondered, and would Downing have the sense to use them? Even if he did, how long might a crosstown trip take on a night like this?

At the top of the stairs, Christensen heard a voice, low and coarse, the words indistinguishable and monotonous. A woman's voice, but one engaged in memorized lines, like the rote prayers of a congregant at High Mass. The gun in his right hand weighed a thousand pounds.

The door to 2B was wide open, its frame splintered. Through the opening, the voice droned on. Christensen leaned close, snatching a word here and there from the toneless steam. “…baptize … right hand … forever and ever.”

Christensen leaned close to the door again, listening. The voice had stopped. He started to knock, but held back. Instead, he pushed the door open wide enough to see into the apartment. It opened without a sound into what seemed like a sparsely furnished living room, stuffy and dry, lit only by the soundless glow of a small television set atop an upturned milk crate. At least two people were in the apartment, he figured, but where? In a place this small, the silence was even more unsettling than the low murmur of an unfamiliar voice.

A passage to his left was brightly lit, and it led into a small breakfast area. Christensen moved to it, and as he did he heard the sound of trickling water. The room around the corner had to be the kitchen. Slowly, watching his feet, he moved tighter against the wall and listened. The sound was oddly comforting, reminding him of the times he and Molly bathed one or another of the girls in the kitchen sink, sponging warm water onto a squirming, kicking baby.

He edged closer to the corner, committed now, compelled to see what was happening but scared half blind. Slowly, he leaned his head around. The room swept into view, until finally he saw the scene. Sonny was on his back, stretched across the kitchen counter with his head tilted back into the sink. He seemed relaxed. A woman draped in a white bedsheet—who else could it be?—was supporting the back of his head with her left hand and running tap water in a gentle stream over his forehead. With her right, she stroked Sonny's temples and smoothed the long dark hair that floated like kelp in the pooled water just below his head. The sink was nearly full.

“There, there,” came the throaty voice Christensen had heard from outside. “Almost home now.”

Now what? Christensen felt awkward, standing uninvited in a stranger's apartment with someone else's gun, a gun he wasn't even sure was loaded, watching a scene that to an outsider might speak of nothing so much as the gentle trust between a parent and child. Suddenly, the woman yanked down on Sonny's hair. Sonny's head snapped back, and he reacted with a kick that rocked the cupboard above him, opening one of its doors. The second kick jarred a stack of plates into motion. Several spilled through the open cup­board door and into the void, splintering against the edge of the counter as they fell. Shards scattered across the floor, a few traveling as far as Christensen's feet. He realized only then that he'd stepped fully into the room.

“Almost home!” she thundered. Using Sonny's hair as a handle, she held his head under the water and anchored her right across his throat by grabbing the base of the spigot. Sonny's head was gone, fully submerged. He couldn't possibly lift it, and his body was thrashing helplessly in the constricted space between the counter and the overhanging cupboards. Sonny remained powerless even as his thrashing grew more violent.