Part 25 (1/2)
”A warning to who?” she asks.
”A warning, Niki. And that's all you need to know.”
”I think there's a h.e.l.l of a lot I need to know,” Niki mumbles, and wipes her hand on her jeans. ”A lot of things you're not telling me.”
”Sometimes knowledge is a luxury we can't afford,”
Spyder says, and knocks at the door. Niki watches as concentric ripples spread rapidly across the wood, shock waves beginning at the point where Spyder's knuckles rapped against the muntin, then spreading out and out and out until they vanish at sensible horizontal and vertical boundaries. Edges of the door, edges of the world, and Back when most people still thought the world was flat, Spyder told her at the Palisades.
I should probably be really freaked out by that, Niki thinks, still watching as the last of the ripples race themselves towards iron hinges and the ceiling and door frame boards. But perhaps she's seen too much, too fast, and nothing will ever amaze her again. The thought is vaguely comforting, and so she doesn't bother asking Spyder why the door doesn't know the difference between solids and liquids. And then it swings open, and there are rickety-looking steps leading down into darkness beneath the house, and the hallway fills suddenly with the moist stink of mildew and sea water and dead fish. Niki covers her mouth and tries not to gag.
”Follow me,” Spyder tells her, as if she has any choice in the matter. ”Stay close, and be careful. These stairs have seen better days.”
”What's waiting for us down there?”
”Just Esme,” Spyder replies, and then she's through the doorway and the old steps squeak like angry rats beneath her feet. Niki lingers a moment, looking back down the long mustard-colored hall, past the strange paintings, and 223.
Eponine Chattox is standing next to the thing that isn't exactly a grandfather clock, staring back at her.
”Come on,” Spyder calls, her voice echoing in the stair-well, and the old woman turns around and walks away, trailing candlelight and fear.
”Yeah,” Niki says. ”I'm coming,” and she hurries to catch up with Spyder.
The cardiologist scowled and made grim predictions that she wouldn't be so lucky next time, warnings that there was only so much abuse a body could take, but in the end he let her go, because there was nothing else he could do. Daria signed everything they gave her to sign, release forms absolving Memorial Hospital of any and all responsibility, forms stating that she was acting against the advice of her doctor, and then they put her in a wheelchair and an orderly carted her down the hall to an elevator and back out into the world. Alex was waiting in the cranberry red Saturn he'd rented at the airport, and he helped her into the car and made her buckle her seat belt.
And now the wide night sky and the prairie land rush by outside her window, and Daria watches the rearview mirror as the lights of Colorado Springs shrink down to a fistful of fallen stars trapped in the lee of the Rockies. There's been hardly a word between them since the hospital, Alex keeping his mouth shut and both his eyes on the road, the asphalt belt of Highway 24 snaking north and east towards Falcon and Peyton and other places Daria's never heard of and never wants to see. There's a Tom Petty song on the radio, but the station is already beginning to break up, and soon there'll be nothing but country and gospel to choose from.
”I don't even know how to perform b.l.o.o.d.y CPR,” Alex murmurs, and a pa.s.sing semi flashes its high beams, so he slows down to the speed limit. ”I had lessons once, in school, but I don't remember any of it.”
”That's okay. I do. In a pinch, I can probably talk you through it.”
224.
”It's not f.u.c.king funny,” he says, and she shrugs and nods her head, because it really isn't funny. But anything's better than thinking about Niki, or the white bird, or Birmingham, or a hundred other awful things that she can't stop thinking about.
”We should stop at the next exit,” she says. ”I need a pack of cigarettes.”
”Over my dead body.”
”Oh no, Alex, not you, too. One of us has to drive,” and this time she laughs and then goes back to watching the night and the low, scrubby shapes huddled in the darkness at the side of the highway. Alex curses to himself and switches off the staticky radio, so the only sounds left are the hum of the tires on the road and the dry whir of the heater.
”I ought to have me f.u.c.king head bashed in,” he says.
”Going along with this crazy s.h.i.+te.” And then they pa.s.s a Colorado state trooper parked in the median, waiting there with his lights off like some patient ambush predator, and Alex curses again and slows down just a little bit more.
”Did you call Marvin?” Daria asks. ”Did you tell him I was leaving the hospital?”
”Yeah. I told him you were a G.o.dd.a.m.n lunatic.”
”How'd he sound?”
”How the h.e.l.l do you think he sounded?”
”I don't want to fight with you,” she says, and rolls down her window an inch or so, letting in a blast of fresh, cold air.
”I'm not going to talk anymore, not if you're going to keep trying to pick a fight.”
”Just when the h.e.l.l are you going to get around to telling me where we're going?” he asks, like he didn't hear a word she said.
”I'll tell you later.”
”I think you need to tell me now.”
”It's really a very long story,” she says and chews at a thumbnail, wis.h.i.+ng that she had a cigarette and anything alcoholic, a beer or a shot of Jack or anything at all to smooth out the jagged places behind her eyes.
225.
”Yeah? Well, I think I can spare the time.”
”Listen, Alex, if you're right, then it's nothing. All you gotta do is shut up and drive me to f.u.c.king Kansas and watch me make an a.s.s of myself. If you're right-and you're always f.u.c.king right-where's the harm?”
”Why don't you try asking me that when you're having another heart attack,” he says and checks the rearview mirror before speeding up again.
”Never mind,” Daria says, and she rolls the window shut.
She's about to close her eyes, because the thirst is getting worse by the minute, already so bad she's starting to sweat, and even bad dreams would be better than arguing, when something scrambles out of the blackness at her side of the road and into the headlights. Something on bandy, long legs that moves so fast it's hardly more than a blur of yellow fur and iridescent eyes.
”Motherf.u.c.ker,” Alex growls and swerves to miss the animal, stomps the break pedal, and the tires shriek as the car fishtails and b.u.mps off the blacktop onto the uneven gravel shoulder of the highway. Daria feels herself moving towards the winds.h.i.+eld, a long moment of weightlessness before the seat belt catches her, and she only whacks her knees against the dash. Half a second later and they're sitting in a cloud of dust, and the bitter smell of hot rubber is seeping in through the vents. Alex s.h.i.+fts into park and lets the engine idle, leans forward until his forehead is resting against the steering wheel.
”b.l.o.o.d.y f.u.c.king f.u.c.k,” he mutters and punches the seat between them.
”Did we hit it?” Daria asks, breathless, both her knees aching, and she's too afraid to turn her head and look behind them, afraid what she might see in the crimson glow of the taillights.
”f.u.c.king G.o.dd.a.m.n deer,” Alex says.
”But did we hit it?”
”No,” he replies and punches the seat again. ”I don't think so. Jesus Christ, it was big as a cow.”
”It wasn't a deer. I think it was a dog.”
226.
”It was a f.u.c.king deer. I saw its horns.”
”Deer don't have horns, they have antlers.”
”You think I give a rat's f.a.n.n.y? It was a f.u.c.king deer.”
”We might have hit it,” Daria says, and unfastens her seat belt, opens her door, and an alarm buried somewhere in the guts of the car starts beeping loudly.