The Edge of Sleep (25 page)

“You bet.”

As the trooper drove off he tried to imagine how many calls they would get answering that description. He was glad he wasn’t going anywhere with his son this weekend. Half the divorced fathers in the state were going to be investigated if they had the misfortune to sleep overnight with their children. It wouldn’t make any difference to someone like these motel owners if the child was a boy or a girl, either, he thought. The switchboard would be ringing off the wall with a description that vague. This was worse than a wild-goose chase. This was a needle in a pin factory.

“He seemed a little slow to be much of a cop,” George said to Reggie as the patrol car pulled away. “Nice guy, but not too bright.”

“They don’t pick them because they’re bright,” Reggie said. Her eyes were still on cabin six as if she could see through the walls. “You don’t see many college professors driving around in squad cars and asking questions.”

“He was bright enough to know the difference between a woman and a man,” George scoffed. “They never go after women for this kind of thing.”

“What kind of thing is it?”

“Whatever it is,” George said, his voice rising defensively. “Obviously something dangerous. Obviously something violent. They’re after a big hulk, right? Women don’t commit violent crimes ... They get you in other ways.” He waited for Reggie to rise to the bait, but she was ignoring him.

“They needle and nag you to death,” he said, watching for her reaction. She continued to study Dee’s cabin. It wasn’t nearly as much fun if she didn’t fight back. George kept at it but without much enthusiasm. “They get illogical and silly. That’ll drive you nuts in the long run, believe me. That’ll kill you just as dead as a slug in the head if you have to put up with it long enough. It’s amazing I’m still on my feet at all.”

“What about the toothbrush then?” she asked suddenly, still not looking at him.

George laughed cruelly. She had the mind of a child. A girl child.

“I don’t know,” he laughed.

“What are they doing with a child’s toothbrush?” she demanded. She turned abruptly to glare at him as if he owed her an explanation. “Answer me that, if you’re so smart.”

She had been listening to him, he realized with relief. It troubled him when she genuinely paid no attention to him; it made him feel alone and foolish. She could pretend to ignore him as much as she wanted as long as he knew she was really listening to him. It was when she truly shut him out that he couldn’t stand it.

“I don’t know, maybe she has sensitive teeth.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake.” Although she had thought that at first herself, it now seemed a woefully weak explanation.

“They don’t have anything else that belongs to a child,” he said.

“And why does the husband go out only after dark?”

“You know why.”

“I know what she’s told you,” Reggie said.

“That’s good enough for me,” said George.

“I know it’s good enough for you. But you’d believe anything your girlfriend told you.”

“She’s not my girlfriend.”

“Not for lack of trying on your part,” she said.

“Might as well talk to the trees,” he said. He turned back toward the office. “Might as well howl at the wind. Just trying to explain things to you has given me a sore throat,” he said. He put his hand on his neck and coughed exploratorily. “It really is sore,” he said. “I’m going in ... You coming?”

“You’re not getting a cold, are you?” She would have to nurse him for a week. He was such a baby when he was sick.

“I need some of that tea and honey and lemon juice you make,” he said.

As if she had a special recipe, she thought. It was just tea and honey and lemon juice, as simple as that, and for forty years he’d acted like it was a magic potion that only she could make. So he wouldn’t have to. So he could lie back and moan and fill a paper bag with used tissues and act like he was paralyzed. As if he needed much of an excuse.

“I’ll make you some,” she sighed.

As they walked toward the office, George put his arm over her shoulders and Reggie allowed it to stay that way.

Dee felt wonderful. Her head was swimming with plans and notions. There didn’t seem to be anything she couldn’t aspire to, nothing she couldn’t accomplish. The world was her oyster, and she already had the pearl. He stood before her now for inspection, his hair newly washed and slicked down so that the part looked as if it had been drawn with a ruler, his ears cleaned, his teeth brushed and smelling of mint.

“Hands.” she said, and Bobby held out his hands, fingernails up, while Ash hovered nervously behind him. The boy’s skin was softly pink and still slightly wrinkled from his bath. The nails were clean and the cuticles were pushed back to show neat half-moons of white. He had started to chew his fingers last week, but Dee had quickly put a stop to that. No boy of hers was going into the world with his fingers always around his mouth, his nails bitten off; it reflected so badly on her. As if she didn’t know enough to break him of his bad habits. As if any boy of hers had any troubles to make him gnaw at himself in the first place.

“Oh, Tommy, aren’t you the handsomest little man?” she crowed. “Aren’t you just my perfect, perfect little boy?”

She fell to her knees and drew him to her in an embrace. She hugged as she believed in doing all things, fully and energetically. Dee hated it when people held back from her, when loved ones tried to pull away or didn’t give of themselves as freely as she did. She had been forced to have a little talk with Tommy about that, too, but he understood her now. His little arms went around her back and squeezed her tight until Dee determined it was enough.

She pulled away suddenly and squinted at him, her head tilted to one side.

“Aren’t you forgetting something?”

Ash held his breath and Bobby’s eyes widened with fright. His mouth fell open.

“Who do you love?”

“I love you. Dee,” Bobby said quickly. “I love you.”

“Did you see his face, Ash? What a scared little rabbit you looked like. Tommy. As if you had anything in the world to be scared about. Don’t you know that Ash and I will always be here to take care of you?”

Bobby cried from relief as much as fright. He thought he had made another mistake, he thought she was going to punish him again. It came like that, so swiftly, mysteriously, like a hurricane that roared at him out of a blue sky. He tried so hard to please her, to give her exactly what she wanted, but still the raging storms came no matter what he did, and they came more frequently and more violently all the time.

He forced a smile on his lips but he couldn’t stop the tears that came spontaneously, nor the running of his nose. He tried to sniff so she wouldn’t hear; she hated when he was messy and sloppy and trouble.

“I know you will,” he said, pushing his smile even wider.

But this time she found his tears endearing. She kissed them from his cheeks, cooing as his mother had done in the past that seemed so long ago. He could never predict her and never be sure he had placated her. He was safe only after she had used the wire on him, when he lay in the tub with Ash tending to him, for Dee always slept then, falling onto the bed with exhaustion. And sadness. Ash said. Disappointment and sadness that Bobby had caused. For he knew he had brought it on himself. He understood very little else about it, but he knew it was his own fault.

Dee was on her feet again, pulsing with the need to be on the go.

“Well, let’s get you dressed,” she said. “We’re going out.”

As Dee pulled on his shorts, held his trouser legs for him to step into, buttoned his shirt, Bobby tried desperately to control his fear. Things were always worse when they returned from a trip. Her expectations were higher when they were in the presence of other people; her plunge into despair and disappointment more precipitous, the beating more savage.

As Dee worked his socks onto his feet, Bobby looked down at the place in her hair where her scalp showed through the part and the dark roots grew before they turned blonde. Behind her. Ash stood, smiling encouragement, but Bobby could see that he, too, was nervous as his big friend rubbed the palms of his hands against his thighs.

Ash could set Dee off, too, and his nervousness was a bad sign. Dee missed nothing. Bobby was convinced. Ash thought she could read his mind and Bobby was not sure she could not. She certainly picked up on the slightest thing, and Ash’s nerves could cause her to turn on Bobby as surely as any mistake of his own. When the atmosphere was not right. Dee looked for a cause and the cause was always the boy.

She finished tying his shoes and looked up.

“What’s wrong?” she demanded.

“Nothing, Dee.”

“You don’t look very excited about going out.”

“I am! I really am!”

“I plan these treats for you, you know. It’s not easy for me to work and take care of our home and turn right around and go out again. But I’m willing to do it for you.”

“Thank you. Dee.”

“All I ask is a little appreciation and some proper behavior.”

“Yes, Dee. I’ll be good.”

“I know you will. You’re my perfect little angel. I know you won’t let me down ... And don’t you look handsome? Doesn’t he look handsome, Ash?”

“He’s so handsome.”

Dee winked conspiratorially at Bobby. “As if he would know. Who’s handsome, Ash?”

“Tommy is handsome.”

“Who else?”

“Cary Grant is handsome. Gregory Peck is handsome. Robert Taylor is handsome.”

Dee chuckled, still enlisting Bobby on her side. Bobby smiled uncertainly.

“Well, you’ve got those right,” she said, then, to Bobby, “All those old movies. And who’s the handsomest of them all?”

“Gregory Peck.”

“Almost right.”

“Cary Grant?”

“The handsomest of them all is our own Tommy,” Dee said. She lifted Bobby’s hand over his head like a champion.

Ash grinned and applauded. “I know,” he said.

Dee was at the door. “I’ll get the car,” she said.

Ash moved Bobby with him into the bathroom out of the line of sight from the door.

“And don’t muss his hair.”

Dee was gone. Bobby stood passively as Ash removed the spread from the bed. They did not speak because there seemed to be nothing to say. With Bobby wrapped in the bedspread and cradled in his arms. Ash turned off the light and rushed into the darkness outside. The television continued to flicker in the empty room.

Reggie felt awful, as if she had scarcely enough energy left to breathe, and yet she couldn’t sleep. The cold had raced through her throat and head and settled into her lungs with such vehemence that she thought she had received not only her share of the illness but George’s share as well. He had whined for a day, drunk his tea with lemon and honey, then passed the germs on to her as he did so many other things, leaving her with all the work, confident that she would deal with it. She was up with the cough half the night, hacking fruitlessly against a phlegm that would not loosen. George had turned to the sofa as a bed, determined to get his night’s rest despite Reggie’s discomfort, so Reggie was upstairs in bed alone, propped up on several pillows into a semirecumbent position, drowsing between outbursts from her chest. At that hour there was little to do besides look out the window at the night. Her eyes hurt too much to read, her brain rejected television. She watched the stars, trying to find the constellations her father had pointed out to her decades ago when the nights were darker and stars larger and more brilliant. And she watched cabin six. Because she could, she had but to turn her head to the side to see it; and because she wanted to.

She saw the woman come out of the cabin and into the car. It was the same drill as before. She came from the light to the dark, opened the car, turned off the interior lights, then returned to the door of the cabin. When it opened again the interior lights were off, but the bluish-green brilliance of the television set was enough to reveal the shape of a man, a huge man, as he rushed into the car. He seemed as big as a bear with a chest as large as two men’s, yet he vanished into the car like a wraith. Again the woman drove toward the highway with her headlights off and again when she came within the light of the road sign, only her silhouette was visible in the car.

It was the third time Reggie had seen it happen and it was exactly the same each time. Two nights ago, on her second sleepless night in bed, Reggie had seen the car return. She saw the sweep of the headlights as the car turned in off the highway and then sudden darkness once more as the lights were extinguished. Only the woman was visible in the road sign light, but when the cabin door was opened, Reggie could see the shape of the bear-man again in the television glow, scurrying into the room like a frightened animal.

Only a fool such as George would believe that nothing strange was going on in there. She had joked with the trooper about vampires, but there was something just as sinister afoot, no doubt about it. And when she was well again, she would find out exactly what it was.

Reggie was seized by a spasm of coughing that brought tears to her eyes. When it released her, she slumped back against the pillows. She would wait until they returned. She would watch the pattern repeat itself, try to measure the dimensions of the bear-man. When she reported things to the state police she wanted to be very precise. She wanted no scoffing about “proof” this time. She would wait; she would be awake anyway.

Chapter 15

B
ECKER SLEPT FOR AN HOUR
then awoke, as fully alert as if he had slept the night through. He didn’t move when he woke, just opened his eyes and lay still, listening, assessing his environment. As always he had a reaction to the darkness, a quick, involuntary flinch of the nervous system that he grasped and controlled before it could escalate into fear. There was no reason for fright, he told himself, no cause for alarm. His heart was pounding and his skin tingled with the rush of adrenaline, but he forced himself to lie still and listen.

He told himself the time was now, not then. The demons of the dark lay in his past—or in his soul—but not here within this room. It was an ordinary night in his adult life, he told himself. The nocturnal noises could all be accounted for, the other breath came from the woman beside him. There was no tread upon the stair. His tormentors were long since dead, the feet that trod so heavily as they descended into the cellar had ceased to move years ago. His only torment now came from within, he reminded himself, and it required no racing heart to deal with it. There was no way to flee it in any event.