Part 6 (1/2)
KELLY! KELLY!.
Wickstrom's eyes jerked open.
”Kelly!” McNeely called again, driving short sharp slaps onto his pale cheeks. Wickstrom's hand sprang up and grabbed McNeely's wrist. McNeely tensed as if about to pull away, but instead, he smiled and ignored the pressure of Wickstrom's iron grip. ”You've been dreaming.”
Wickstrom looked at him, not recognizing McNeely at first. When he did, he let his grip relax and wiped beads of sweat from his forehead and beneath his eyes.
”It must have been a beauty,” said McNeely.
Wickstrom shook his head dully. ”It . . .” The words locked in his throat and he cleared it roughly. ”It was horrible.”
”I didn't know if you were going to come out of it or not. I called your name a couple of times but couldn't wake you.”
”Yeah. Yeah. I heard you, but it sounded like something else in the dream,” and he told McNeely all he could remember.
”Tekeli-li,” McNeely repeated thoughtfully. ”That's from Poe. Arthur Gordon Pym.”
”About . . . about the cannibals?” Wickstrom's face was strained, reaching for a memory.
”Yes,” McNeely nodded. ”A sea voyage. There's cannibalism among the survivors of a wreck. You've read Pym?”
”Long ago. Oh, Christ, it must have been high school. Junior high. I remember though. I haven't thought about that in years. That last part . . . they're in the Arctic...”
”Antarctic, I think.”
”Yeah, okay. Anyway, it's all white . . . and those birds-yeah, the birds are saying that Tekeli-li thing, and I remember it scared the s.h.i.+t out of me because I thought-” He paused.
”You thought they were calling your name.”
Wickstrom looked up and nodded. The fear was still in his eyes. ”And that thing,” he said softly.
”Thing?”
”The big thing that they saw at the very end. The big white thing that stood up in front of them.: ”Yes?”
”You never knew what it was. Because the story stopped there. With that white thing in front of them.” Wickstrom shuddered and hugged himself. ”I dreamed about that thing for weeks. If you hadn't woken me up, I think I would've dreamed about it again.” He looked at McNeely. ”And I think I would have known what it was this time.”
”Forget it,” McNeely said more heartily than he felt. ”Frosty the Snowman, probably. It's only natural that this place'll work on our heads a little. Give us some frights we'd forgotten about. But even if it can do that, that's all it can do.” He paused, thinking. ”Do open s.p.a.ces bother you?”
”Hah. d.a.m.n right they do. I guess that's a city boy for you. 'Nam really got to me. If I wasn't hunkered down in a hole, I was miserable. I just felt so f.u.c.king vulnerable all the time.”
”I know what you mean. I feel the same way about enclosed s.p.a.ces.”
As soon as he said it, McNeely wondered what the h.e.l.l he was doing. That was one of the things he never told anyone, not even Jeff. Reveal your weaknesses and people can use them against you. Yet he'd blurted it out like a California executive dripping all over an a.n.a.lyst's couch. Why?
”You're kidding,” said Wickstrom. ”How in h.e.l.l can you stand being locked up in this place?”
”I'm not locked up,” said McNeely with a smile, hoping that Wickstrom would think he had been kidding. ”Like I told our host, all I have to do to get out is to cut off everyone else's heads.” He laughed, and Wickstrom laughed with him.
”Jesus, I hope it doesn't come to that,” Wickstrom said, rising and chalking his cue.
Jesus, thought McNeely, I hope it doesn't either.
Gabrielle was sleeping. Neville watched her small b.r.e.a.s.t.s rise and fall beneath the thin coverlet. Her breathing was slow and easy, and he knew she would sleep for a long time if she was not disturbed. He let his hand rest for a moment on the soft flatness of her stomach, and then he rose quietly from her side. At another time he might have caressed her until she stirred from her sleep, and then made love to her, but that was before a great many things had occurred, and he wondered if before the month was up he might make love to her once again.
As he stood watching her, his hand went down to touch himself. There was no response. He bit back tears and walked through the living room of their suite into the hall.
It seemed alive.
And life was what he needed. For so long now his thoughts had been on death. Every waking moment it walked with him, a dark shadow at his side. Only in dreams could he escape its companions.h.i.+p. His dreams, ever since he had known of his illness and its final and fatal denouement, had been clear and clean and happy, and so he slept more and more, changing his schedule from seven hours a night to ten or more, with frequent naps in the afternoons. It was the only way to relax his churning mind, give ease to his sympathetic body. He hoped he would die in the middle of a dream so that it would never end, and he would never have to face the parting.
But now, standing in the hall of The Pines, he could forget death. For whatever was there had transcended it, beaten it down, shown it in its reality as a miserable faker. Death be not proud, he thought, and for the first time he meant it. It became more than Donne's sacred rationalization-now it was a battle cry that his mind and body, crazed and sane cells alike, shrieked in silent triumph through The Pines.
”I will beat you,” he said to the gray thing at his shoulder. ”They will show me how.”
He could see the shadow now, and he laughed at the look of wary concern in its dull eyes, the unaccustomed frown that banished its usual death's-head grin. It seemed to shrink away from him, as if it were at last afraid, scorned by his mockery.
”Oh, no,” he whispered to it. ”Stay with me. You've frightened me long enough. Death, thou shalt die!” he quoted, beckoning to it to follow him, follow and learn.
He pa.s.sed down the hall to the central stairway and walked downstairs, listening all the while. Slowly it dawned on him that it was not the whispering of the trees outside they had heard when the doors and windows had been sealed, but instead, the house itself and its residents whispering to them. He could hear it now, and could even make out, if not words, at least individual syllables. Were they trying to talk to him? Trying to tell him how to join them in immortality?
There would be time enough. Time to listen and learn to understand.
The fireplace in the Great Hall had gone cold, and Neville felt a sudden hunger gnaw at him. He'd lost his appet.i.te in the past few weeks, whether from the disease or his fear or the excitement of coming to The Pines he could not say, so the insistent growling of his stomach came as a surprise. He walked into the kitchen, intrigued with the idea of fixing himself a meal for the first time in years, and found Seth c.u.mmings sitting at the table, eating a chicken sandwich and a small green salad.
”Well, Mr. Neville.” He smiled, leaping to his feet. ”Felt a little hungry. I guess we have to go by our own clocks now, right?”
”I suppose so.” Neville was far from happy to find c.u.mmings there, but his hunger drove away his distaste for the man's company.
”Can I get you anything?” c.u.mmings asked.
”No thanks. I'll manage.” Neville opened one of the tall cupboards. Shelves full of brightly colored cans towered to the ceiling. Soups, spaghetti, stews, tinned meats, smoked oysters were all plentiful.
”There's a lot in the freezer if you don't feel like canned. And fresh meat for sandwiches in the fridge. The chicken's great. Fresh fruit and vegetables too.” c.u.mmings indicated his salad. ”Might as well eat them up before they go bad on us, huh?”
Neville made himself a chicken sandwich and selected a piece of fruit from the refrigerator bin.
”Do you want any milk?” c.u.mmings asked, holding up the bottle.
”No thank you. I don't like milk.”
”Me neither, but with my stomach, what can you do?”
c.u.mmings's sandwich was gone, his gla.s.s nearly empty. Neville wondered why he didn't finish and leave. He didn't want to mingle with these men, and the sooner they knew that, the better. They were here for a purpose beyond their knowing, and he would deal with them when he was ready. But until that time he didn't want to know them any better than he knew them now. ”Are you finished?” he said dryly, hoping c.u.mmings would take the hint.
”Oh. Yeah. I am. It's just that . . . well, it's nice to be able to talk to someone. This place is pretty lonely.”