S.W. Tanpepper's GAMELAND: Season Two Omnibus (Episodes 9-11) (78 page)

“Move!” she yelled.

The answering machine beeped.

“No, Lyssa!”

This is the Woodbury Animal Clinic calling with results—

Lyssa lunged for the pistol, but her feet slipped on the entryway rug and flew out from beneath her. She grabbed a handful of shirt instead and fell, pulling him down with her. She was vaguely aware that the gun was between them, that his finger was still on the trigger.
This is when it happens
, she thought, her heart skipping in panic.
This is when it goes off and one of us gets shot. And it'll be an accident, too, except one of us will be hurt. Or worse.

But it didn't. Ramon shoved her down. He pressed his hand against her shoulder and shouted her name. “What's gotten into you? Stop it!” He kept his knee on her thigh, pinning her down.

Far away, almost a memory, the answering machine beeped again.

“Sam's okay,” he shouted at her face, making her flinch. “I didn't shoot him, but I'm sure he's pissed off as hell. So if you go out there, he's liable to take it out on you. I won't let that happen.”

“Get off of me!”

“Not until you—”

Lyssa reached up and slapped him hard across the face. “You're fucking crazy!” she screamed. “I'm leaving you. I'm leaving this house and Long Island! And I'm taking Cassie with me!”

“No, you're not. You and Cassie are staying right the hell here,” he panted. “Nobody is going anywhere! So help me if you try . . . .”

He let the rest go unspoken. Slowly, he stood up, wiping the back of his free hand across his bloodied mouth. “I won't let you take Cassie away from me. Not again.”

Lyysa's mind was a blur. He was terrifying her. But she also knew this wasn't him. This was the Stream. Her Ramon didn't like guns, had only gotten one because of the potential for threats against them and their lab. He'd never even shot the damn thing. Not until today.

The towers are making him crazy.

“I need to fix things,” he panted. “
We
need to fix things.” He slowly began to release the pressure on her. “I can't do it alone. I need your help. We have to stay.”

As soon as she was free, Lyssa stumbled to her feet and backed quickly away from him, her jaw clenched in grim determination.
How could he be so blind?

Her eyes flicked to the small black object on the floor. It was his phone. It had fallen out of his shirt pocket when he'd tackled her.

Acting without thought, she snatched the thing up before he could react, then turned and fled down the hall, ignoring his cries of anger. She kept expecting him to lose control again and put a bullet in her skull.

But he didn't. “We're not leaving!” he yelled after her. “I won't let you take her! Not again!”

She ran upstairs wishing the police would come. At the same time, she was afraid they actually might.

 

Lyssa checked that the door to the master bedroom was locked. She knew it wouldn't keep Ramon out if he wanted to get in, but it sent a message at least that she didn't want him anywhere near her or Cassie.

It troubled her that Cassie was asleep again. She'd woken briefly when her mother had carried her from her own room and set her on the bigger bed. She'd asked if Miss Ronica was going to take her to school. “I won't tell,” she murmured. “It's our secret.”

“What secret?” Lyssa asked, confused. But Cassie sighed. Her answer was unintelligible. It sounded like, “No shots.”

She realized that barricading them upstairs was probably not the best idea. If she'd been thinking more clearly, she would've just grabbed her and left. It was important that they get away from the Stream and the damn phones that were driving people insane. But a part of her still didn't want to leave Ramon behind.

She could hear him downstairs in the living room, stomping around and muttering. He was undoubtedly waiting for her to come out and try to escape. She knew he wouldn't let them.

I won't let you take her away from me. Not again.

She feared him, feared what he'd become and what he might be capable of doing. And with a gun, he was even more of a danger.

She could picture him sitting at the bottom of the stairs, stroking the pistol like it was a pet cat. Would he shoot her if she tried to come down with Cassie?

How long?
she wondered.
How long before the Stream's effects wore off? Would they?

She didn't know if taking away his phone would even work. He might never recover his senses. Maybe the damage was permanent.

She had thought about dropping it into the toilet, but then decided not to. Instead, she'd placed it inside the medicine cabinet in the bathroom.

Hours passed. It was early afternoon and she hadn't had a bite to eat in almost twenty-four hours. Her stomach growled with hunger.

“You can come down now,” Ramon called up the stairs to her.

Don't come up
, Lyssa silently screamed.
Stay down there.

“Lyssa, I'm sorry. I don't know what I was thinking. It was an accident.”

She pulled Cassie closer to her on the bed, only vaguely aware that her skin was warm and sticky.

Leave us alone. Go away—

There was a knock at the bedroom door and Lyssa nearly yelped. Then a jiggle. All of the bedroom knobs had the same type of locking mechanism. All it took was a pin inserted into the tiny hole to release it. Ramon knew that.

“Why won't you let me in?”

She heard him moving away.

“I just wanted to tell you that Sam's all right. I saw him in his front yard a little while ago. I'm sure if he was hurt, he wouldn't have been standing there like that.”

Lyssa frowned.
Standing like what?

“I think he was waiting for the police to arrive. I think he called them.”

She could hear the worry now in his voice. At least he still had enough sense to know he'd crossed the line.

She heard him shuffling around, heard him pull open the hallway window. “Sam?” he called. “Sam, come out of your house. We need to talk.”

There was a low rumble of thunder in the distance. The sky was still brilliant blue, but storm clouds were beginning to pile up from the northwest, brilliant white and towering.

There was a long pause. Lyssa quietly got up off the bed and went over and pressed her ear against the wall a few feet to the left of the door.

“Goddamn it, Sam!” Ramon barked. “What are you doing over there? I said to come outside. I know you can hear me. I can see your window's open!”

She heard Ramon pass the room and stomp down the stairs. She didn't dare open the door.

* * *

When next she opened her eyes, the sky was darker than the air, heavy with clouds. Rain was beginning to patter against the window. The pit of Lyssa's stomach felt as large and empty as a rain barrel in July.

Cassie was still asleep in the bed beside her, snoring quietly.

Lyssa closed her eyes and listened. But the house felt empty.

What are you doing, Ramon?
she wondered.

Thunder rolled across the sky, but below her, inside the house, there was not a sound to be heard.

 

Ramon pulled open the side door of the garage, but he didn't step out. The rain had come all at once, blown in on a sudden gust of wind. The wind had since died, but it was still raining. It was pouring. He listened to the electric sizzle of it hitting the driveway and the dull rumble of it on the roof. The tinny
thud thud thud
of fat drops hitting the bottom of the downspout.

Everything seemed gray. Even the vibrant green of the trees and grass was muted. The sidewalks were empty.

Tilting his head to the side, he could see a corner of Sam's house. The second-story window, which he assumed opened to his bedroom, was wide open. The curtains were wet and stuck to the screen. A gust of wind pushed them away for a moment, then retreated. The fabric fell back, reannealed.

Ramon frowned. It didn't seem like the man to leave his window open during a storm. All that water getting inside, soaking into the carpet. If not aired out, it would start to mold in a few days and rot the floorboards.

The man was peculiar, no doubt about it. He kept his house, inside and out, immaculately clean. This now struck Ramon as ironic, given that Sam seemed to neglect to his own physical appearance. He was a sloppy-looking middle-aged man with a bad haircut. Perhaps not surprisingly, he was unmarried and unattached. In fact, Ramon couldn't recall ever having seen him entertain guests at the house. He had no discernible income or skills, other than raising prize laying chickens. He took pride in lace curtains and painstakingly painted gingerbread eaves. Yet he clearly thought nothing of bludgeoning pet rabbits to death in front of little girls.

Strange indeed.

Ramon couldn't stop thinking about that open window. It was so unlike the man to let the rain come in like that.

There was no umbrella in the garage and none in the trunk of the car, but it didn't matter. The neighboring house was a quick jog down the driveway and across twenty feet of lawn. A total of thirty yards, maybe. And so what if it was pouring out there?
It's just water; you won't melt.
He just needed to be sure the man wasn't lying in a pool of blood inside his house with a bullet in his stomach.

Stepping out, yet still sheltered beneath his own eaves, he reached back and pulled the door shut. Then, ducking his head, he dashed out into the rain, his arms held out away from his body for balance. The cement was slick. He slipped and nearly fell making the turn around the end of the fence. Pivoting on one foot, arms pinwheeling, he managed to remain upright. He angled for Sam's front door.

By the time he pounded up the steps, he was soaked through to the skin. It was a warm rain, yet he was covered in goose pimples.

The front door was already open.

“Sam?” he croaked.

The door yielded easily beneath his hand, emitting little more than a sigh.

Light spilled out from what appeared to be a sitting room. That's the word which came to Ramon's mind, anyway. It was like one of those old parlors. The furniture was antique, wooden and formal. The fabric ornately decorated. The arms were covered in doilies. He couldn't remember the last time he'd seen doilies.

“Sam? You here?”

Behind him, the rain continued to fall unabated, the wind pushing it deep enough beneath the porch roof that he could feel it on the backs of his legs. It was the only sound he could hear.

“It's Ramon. Can we talk? Sam?”

Silence.

“Hey, um, I saw that your upstairs window was open. You might want to close it.” He stepped in, knowing that the excuse was weak, and he craned his neck to see around the opening into the kitchen. It, too, appeared to be decorated in a retro style, harkening back to the middle of the previous century. “Rain's getting inside. It's going to ruin your floor. Hello? Sam?”

There was a dull rumbling sound.

Thunder.

But no flash of lightning.

The house was quiet, almost preternaturally so. Almost as if it was sucking sound out of the air.

The house felt dead.

Don't be silly.

He had never really considered it before, how everything in the world had its own heartbeat, made its own noise. Every single living and inanimate object made sound, even if it was beyond the ability of the human ear to pick it up. The body was aware of this; it knew when those sounds were absent. Objects emitted a sort of resonance, a signature that seemed to say, “I am a part of this place.”

Houses were the same way. It was more than just the quiet ticking of a wall settling or the wind in the eaves. More than the whispers of leaves or mice scurrying in the rain gutters. It was the sound an object makes simply because it is a physical part of a world filled with other sounds echoing off of it.

Sam's house felt devoid of them all.

Ramon stepped back, out through the door and onto the porch.
This isn't right. Something's weird here.
And he made to shut the front door.

He had never really liked Locke. In fact, he had every reason to hate the man. Just because they shared a fence line didn't mean he owed him any particular courtesy or respect.

You shot at him. You need to know.

“Sam? I'm coming in!”

The door swung easily again, as if in invitation, and Ramon stepped around it. A breeze gently knocked it against the wall. He pushed it shut behind him, and the click of the latch sounded unexpectedly loud to his ears.

Outside, thunder rumbled. There was still no lightning.

But he didn't notice. The only thing he could hear was the pounding of his heart as he made his way deeper inside the house.

 

Ramon's phone was ringing, doling out some obnoxious ringtone behind the mirror in the bathroom cabinet. Lyssa regarded her reflection and wondered if she should answer it. Would doing so infect her? Did it only take one call, one exposure, to plant the seed of the illness inside her head? Or was it cumulative?

She swung the glass door open, but she didn't reach in.

The ringing had stopped. Whoever was trying to call had given up.

Well, there you go. Problem solved.

The phone emitted a loud chirp, somehow managing to sound angry. She reached in and pulled the device out and saw that it hadn't been a call after all, but a text:

<<
 
R U HOME
 
>>

She had no idea who was asking. The message had been sent from an unlisted number.

Ronnie?

She hated that her mind automatically went to the girl.

She typed in a response and sent it:
<<
 
WHO WANTS TO KNOW
 
>>