On Tenterhooks (4 page)

Thok thok thok thok

Zack’s body was buried to the waist. His head rippled with each blow
,
like a deflated basketball.

DAMN, THAT’S GOTTA HURT LIKE HELL
.
WHAT A GAME FOLKS, WHAT A GAME!

“Zack!” she screamed again
.
Tears fell as she watched Bastille pummel him
.
She tried to bend down, hoping to
drop below
the front of the bleachers
.
She couldn’t even twist her small frame enough to slide behind the handrail.

Thok thok thok thok

Only Zack’s shoulders and head remained
,
as the wicked onslaught continued
.
Bastille was John Henry
,
and Zack was simple steel. Bastille crouched and continued his windmill assault.

“Somebody, please help him!” Abby screamed
.
“Help
him; help
my brother!”

WELL, I’LL BE DAMNED!

She punched at anything within reach
.
The crowd had become a faceless sea of soft coats and jackets
.
There were no faces of concern, no ears to hear her pleas. The weight crushed her thighs against the rail.

Thok thok thok thok

Abby wanted to cover her ears, to block out the wet and spongy pummeling. Only Zack’s head was visible
.

“No!” she screamed. She was sobbing. “Zack, I love you!”

Thok thok thok THOK

With a final
,
powerful turn of the windmill, Bastille buried her brother’s face into the earth. Abby’s legs were numb. The weight of the coat-crowd behind her curled her over the top of the railing
.
Bastille stopped his spinning arm and stood up
.

WELL
,
THAT’S SURE AS HELL ONE OF THE WORST PLAYS THIS ANNOUNCER HAS EVER SEEN.

He turned and looked at Abby. Only it wasn’t Bastille
.
It was an old man
—
an impossibly thin and tall man
.
Bastille’s uniform hung off his skeletal frame like massive folds of blue and silver extraneous skin. Shoulder pads jutted off his narrow shoulders like the small plastic wings of a
toy dinosaur
.

I DON’T KNOW HOW THE HELL S TECH’S GONNA PULL THIS ONE OUTTA THE FIRE NOW!

The man had an unkempt and greasy shock of white hair
.
His skin was translucent under the powerful stadium lights
.
A long
,
hooked nose and bulging hateful eyes sat over a sneering mouth
.
His
pointed
, yellowed teeth gleamed above a gray tongue
.
He was laughing at her.

Rut rut rut rut

Abby felt the snap of metal reverberate through her numbed legs. She fell forward from the stand
.
The fall happened before she could get her hands up to shield her face. She tasted the grass in her mouth as a thousand coat-people crushed her into darkness
. . .

She woke up to excruciating muscle spasms that wracked her body
.
She was conscious
,
but had to fight her own body to regain control
.
She was buried in a mound of pillows, wrestling her comforter on the carpet next to her bed
.
Tentatively, she sat up on shaking legs
.
Her calf muscles burned
,
just as they had in
her sleep
, just
as
they did every time she had the nightmare
.

She pulled herself up with a grunt and lay gasping on her bed
,
rubbing
at her sore muscles. It was the same thing, over and over: a vivid and violent nightmare, a painful wakening. She had grown tired of this nearly nightly ritual.

In real life, her intuition typically served her well. But in these dreams, it never kicked in early enough to save her brother
.
Of course, it was a dream, and not at all like his
actual
accident. But somewhere inside, she was convinced that if she could find a way to get to Zack before Bastille (or the old man) did, she would save him
.
What had terrified her at first now left her frustrated and angry
.
She felt like the team player who could win the game
,
but the coach always failed to put her in
.
After Zack had died, she had felt that same nagging apprehension she always felt in her nightmare
—
that she was supposed to be doing something
,
but she didn’t know what it was until it was too late. It wasn’t something to discuss with her parents or something a counselor could diagnose. It was just a general feeling of disorientation that came and went, as if she
were
somehow out of phase with all of the things in motion around her.

Abby
hadn’t discussed the dreams yet with her parents
.
A few weeks before Zack’s accident,
she had
spent time with her mom
,
watching a show about chefs who competed by making outrageously beautiful
,
but impossibly fragile
,
works of art from water, flour and sugar
.
For the final portion of the competition, the chefs had to load these unstable creations to a moving cart and bring them to the judges
.
Sometimes, the cakes never made it to the finish line. They might implode or sway and fall. The movement was too much for their fragile frame. That was Abby’s mom. If you kept her still, she was solid and beautiful
.
But when you intruded on her grief, she’d collapse
.
It wasn’t a dramatic
response
, but she’d retreat to her bedroom for hours, clutching a box of tissues on the way
.

Abby
became aware
soon after Zack’s death that you didn’t mention his name
.
Her mother had to initiate the conversation
.
If she mentioned Zack’s name first, you had a green light to proceed
.
It was a painful learning curve for Abby
.

She
found that dealing with her dad was less confusing, but just as painful
.
The grief had cut him to ribbons inside, but
that was rarely visible
.
Instead,
he
had become his wife’s shield
.
If
anyone got too close to her mother’s grief, he’d shut them down. Abby knew that he loved both of them fiercely, now more than ever
.
Her own
pain ran deep, but so did her strength. Her dad knew
she
was strong enough to handle the situation
.
But since neither
of them
was
as confident about
her
mother, he spent most of his time
in the role of spouse-protector
.

Abby didn’t believe that telling them
about her dream
would help, but she knew it could hurt, so she kept the nightly terrors to herself. She also
was painfully aware that
the long nights and dark circles would catch up with her eventually
.

I just hope I can stop that wicked old man before then.

Chapter 4

With each stair he climbed, Martin’s feeling of déjà vu grew stronger. Of course, he’d climbed these steps many times before
but t
oday
it felt different
.
Something was a little bit off.
He couldn’t pinpoint it
—
just a nagging feeling of concern
.

The steps led
to his daughter’s dorm room on the sixth floor
.
He rarely took the elevator
;
climbing these stairs was
his
only regular workout
.

Maybe not a work
out by most standards
. B
ut since I visit almost every weekend
,
at least it is
regular.

He paused to catch his breath at
the
clean, well-lit f
ourth-
floor landing
.
The stairw
ell was
silent, as usual
.
Fire drills were the only reason the dorm’s inhabitants would bother with the stairs.

“Ought to be,” he mused, “with what I am paying in tuition!”

The red emergency phon
e gleamed in contras
t to the brightly
lit walls around it
.
He leaned on the wall
next to the phone
and cleared his throat
.
The echo catapulted
to the ground level,
and then bounced back up
at
him
.

He turned and grabbed the cool steel railing, pulling himself up the last two flights of stairs
.
Opening
the fire door
,
he
was relieved to be out of the
sterile
glare of the stairwell lights
.
Here in the hallway, the
lights
were much more subdued
, and t
he carpet was a welcome relief from the
unyielding
steel steps.

“All’s quiet here,” he
thought
. No echoing of footsteps on stairs, no clinking discord as his
metal
watchband hit the steel railing
.
Just calm lights, soothing
tufted wool
and quiet.

“Since when is a girl
’
s dorm
itory
quiet on a Friday night?”
he asked himself.

Where
were
the pounding bass, the shrill buzzes and beeps of
two
dozen
smart
phones and laptops?  Why was there no giggling, no chattering from the twenty-something girls who lived on this floor with his daughter
Maggie
?
He had expected
girl
s everywhe
re
,
primping with hairdryers in hand and shouting back and forth to each other about what to wea
r for
the night’s
sorority mixer.

He picked up his pace toward
Maggie’s
room
.
The
persistent
been-here-before feeling
inched darkly toward
dread as he walked the
dormitory
hall
.
It was dead quiet
—
unheard of
on
a Friday night.

And why am
I even here on a Friday night?

He always picked
Maggie
up around noon on Saturdays
.
He’d take her to lunch or a movie, talk about her classes, life in general
.
But never on a Friday! He knew there
had been
a perfectly good reason for the change in
routine;
but he
couldn’t put his finger on it
now
.
He reached her room, the last on the left, and knocked on the door.

“
Maggie
, honey?” he asked through the door. “It’
s Daddy,
sweetie
.”

No response. He could
see
light under the door
.
He knocked again
,
softly.

“
Mags
?” he repeated through the door.

He heard rustling
.
Was someone moving across the carpet?
He saw a shadow move
under
the door, but still no response.
He grabbed the handle of the door and turned
.
Locked.

He pounded the door with his fist.

“
Maggie
!” he shouted at the door. “It
’s you
r
father! Open the door
.
Mags, w
hat’s wrong?”

He heard a faint cry
—
Maggie’s
cry. He cursed. He frisked himself, searching his pockets.

“Damn!” he said. He’d left his cell phone in the car
.
He turned and pounded on the door across the hall
.
No response
.
He considered sprinting back to the stairwell, using the emergency phone to call
for help
.
H
e was afraid to leave her. He turned back to her door.

“Maggie, it
’s okay
!
” he shouted. “I’m
gonna try to break down the door
,
honey
!
  Move away from it if you can!”

The shadow beneath the door shifted. He backed up across the hallway
.

“Just like
on
the cop shows
,
” he whispered
.
He took a giant step forward
,
and then smashed against the door with his right foot
using
all the power his six-foot five, two-hundred pound frame could manage. The door rattled
against
its frame
,
but didn’t budge
.
The pain in his leg was a firestorm
.
He cried out and fell on the plush carpet
, with its now-faded plaid rendition of the school colors
.
He’d broken his ankle
;
the knowledge was as certain as the pain.
From behind the door
,
he heard a girl scream.

“No!” he screamed back. “I’m coming
,
baby! Hold on!”

He pulled himself up using the doorknob
.
He back
ed up again across the hall and
g
ritted his teeth
.
He knew it would
permanently damage him, but he
didn’t care
.
Maggie
was behind that door
,
and she was in trouble
.

“Gonna do it!”
He focused his mind on the door
.
He
would
break it down
.
He took a deep breath and held it.
Leaning gingerly on his right leg, h
e step
ped forward on his left leg. At the last
moment,
he
clenched
his thigh muscles, pushing all of his force into his shattered
right
ankle. He connected with the door,
directly
above the doorknob
.
He heard the wood shatter at the same time he felt and heard a wet popping sound at his knee. He screamed once again
, this time in sheer agony
. The pain was a white light of fire racing through his
body
. H
e collapsed in the doorway
,
as
the door itself
flew open wide.

Propping
himself up on his elbows
, struggling to rise above the pain, Martin
saw
Maggie
.
Sh
e was lying on her bed, face up
.
Her eyes were sunken and glazed, surrounded
with deep circles of purple. Her face was a pale gray. Her hair hung in matted clumps around her face,
glistening with
sweat.

Standing
above her was a thin man in a dark suit.
He tipped his
black-
brimmed
hat to Martin with a crooked half
-
smile. Martin’s first thought was that
Maggie
had died
,
and
this man
was administering
priestly
last rites.

“No!” he screamed. “
Maggie
!”

At the sound of his voice,
Maggie
blinked
,
and she focused on him for the first time.

“D
addy?” she
whispered
. “Daddy, help!”

Martin tried to pull himself up
.
The
stranger
began to pant,
smiling and
staring at Martin.

Rut rut rut rut

Martin
forced himself up
, steadied his elbows on the floor in front of him,
and
tried to crawl
toward the bed, his useless right leg dangl
ing
behin
d him
.
He tried to pull himself
across the floor
.
The
stranger
continued
the
vile
panting
, like laughter
, watching
with
an amused smirk on his face
.

Left elbow up, right elbow down. Right elbow up,
left elbow down; over and over
.
But Martin couldn’t gain any ground
.
He was still in the doorway. “Leave her alone!”
he
screamed
.
The fire in his leg was intense
,
and he felt helpless
.

The
stranger’s
laughter stopped
and h
e turned to Martin
holding
up his hands like a magician
.
The
long, bony
fingers
were
an eerie
translucent
white
. Martin could see ugly blue veins pulsing
in the flesh
just beneath
.
The
n the man
crossed
them
in front of each other
repeatedly
until they
became a white blur
in the air.
When he finally stopped,
flourishing
his
fingers
like a Japanese fan
, each became
a
massive
cluster of
foot-long syringe
s with
needles
of
glistening steel
.
W
hite tendrils of smoke
floated
from
the end of each needle
. Even from the floor, Martin could see
bubbling black tar in
each
syringe
.