Part 17 (1/2)

Something still dripped onto him. He looked up. Alison was suspended above him in the pa.s.senger seat, the seatbelt holding her there, holding in the pieces that were still intact. The lamppost had done something to her. She was no longer whole. She had changed. Adam snapped his eyes shut as something else parted from her and hit his shoulder.

Heat gushed and caressed his face, but then there was a gentle ripping sound above him, and coppery blood washed the flames away from his skin like his wife brus.h.i.+ng crumbs from his stubble. The flames could never take him. Not when he was such a lucky man.

You are the first to visit both places, Amaranth's voice echoed like the vague memory of pain. You will be... fun You will be... fun.

”Tiger!”

Jamie?

”Jamie!”

Flames danced around him once more. Fingers snagged his jacket. A hand reached in bearing a knife and he crunched down into shattered gla.s.s as his seat-belt was sliced. Something else fell from above him as he was dragged out, a final present, a last, lasting gift from his Alison. As he was hauled through the windscreen, hands beating at the burning parts of him, his doomed son screaming for him from the doomed car, he wondered whether it was a part of her that he had ever seen before.

He was laying out on the lawn. It had not been cut for a long time because his riding lawnmower had broken down. Besides, he liked the wild appearance it gave the garden. Alison had liked wild. She had loved the countryside; she had been agnostic, but she had said the smells and sounds and sights made her feel closer to G.o.d.

Adam felt close to no one, certainly not G.o.d. Not with Amaranth peering at him from the woods sometimes, following him on his trips into town, watching as good fortune and bad luck juggled with his life and health.

No, certainly not G.o.d.

Alison had been buried alongside her mother over a year ago. He had not been to the cemetery since. He remembered her in his own way-he was still painting-and he did not wish to be reminded of what her ruined body had become beneath the ground. But he was reminded every day. Every morning, on his bus trip into town to visit Jamie in the hospital, he was reminded. Because he so wanted his son to join her.

That was guilt. That was suffering. That was the sickest irony about the whole thing. He's a lucky lad He's a lucky lad, the doctors would still tell him, even after a year. He's a fighter. He'll wake up soon, you'll see. He'll have scars, yes He's a fighter. He'll wake up soon, you'll see. He'll have scars, yes... And then Adam would ask about infection and the doctors would nod, yes, there has been something over the last week or two, inevitable with burns, but we've got it under control, it's just bad luck that...

And so on.

His wife, dead. His son in a coma from which he had only awakened three times, and each time some minor complication had driven him back under. He was growing up dead. And still Adam went to him every day to talk to him, to whisper in his ear, to try and bring him around with his favorite nursery rhymes and the secret dad-voices he had used on him when things were good, when life was normal. When chance was still a factor in his existence, and fate was uncertain.

He looked across at the house. It was big, bought with Alison's life insurance, their old home sold for a good profit to the couple who had wanted it so much. This new property had an acre of land, a glazed rooftop studio with many panes already cracked or missing, a Mercedes in the driveway-a prison. A h.e.l.l. His own manufactured h.e.l.l, perhaps to deny the idea that such a grand home could be seen as fortunate, lucky to come by. The place was a constant reminder of his lost family because he had made it so. No new start for him.

The walls of the house were lined with his own portraits of Alison and Jamie. Some of them were bright and full of suns.h.i.+ne and light and positive memories. Others contained thoughts that only he could read- bad memories of the crash-and what he had seen of Alison and heard of Jamie before being dragged out from the car. The reddest of these paintings hung near the front door for all visitors to see.

Not that he had many visitors. Until yesterday.

Howards had tracked him down. Adam had let him in, knowing it was useless to fight, and knowing also that he truly wanted to hear what the old man had to say.

”I've found a way out,” he had whispered. ”I tried it last week... I injected myself with poison, then used the antidote at the last minute. But I could have done it. I could have gone on. They weren't watching me at the time.”

”Why didn't you?”

”Well... I've come to terms with it. Life. As it is. I just wanted to test the idea. Prove that I was still in control of myself.”

Adam had nodded, but he did not understand.

”I thought it only fair to offer you the chance,” Howards had said.

Now, Adam knew that he had to take that chance. Whether Jamie ever returned or not-and his final screams, his shouts of Tiger! Tiger Tiger! Tiger!, had convinced Adam that his son had been the twitching shape on the burning cross-he could never be a good father to him. Not with Amaranth following him, watching him. Not when he knew what they had done.

Killed his wife.

Given his son bad luck.

Yesterday afternoon he had been lucky enough to find someone willing to sell him a gun, the weapon with which he would blow his own brains out. And that, he thought, perfectly summed up what his life had become.

”Oh, look,” Adam muttered, ”a four-leaf clover.” He flicked the little plant and sighed, pus.h.i.+ng himself to his feet, stretching. He had been laying on the gra.s.s for a long time.

He walked across the lawn and onto the gravel driveway, past the Mercedes parked mock-casual. Its tires were flat and the engine rusted through, although it was only a year old. One of a bad batch, he had thought, and he still tried to convince himself of that, even after all this time.

He entered the house and pa.s.sed into the study.

Two walls were lined with moldy books he had never read, and never would read. The portraits of the people he loved stared down at him and he should have felt at peace, should have felt comforted, but he did not. There was a large map on one wall, a thousand intended destinations marked in red, the half dozen places he had visited pinned green. Travel was no longer on his agenda, neither was reading. He could go anywhere on his own because he had the means to do so, but he no longer felt the desire. Not now that his family was lost to him.

He was about to take a journey of a different kind. Somewhere even stranger than the places he had already seen. Stranger than anyone had seen, more terrifying, more-final. After the past year he was keener than ever to find his way there.

And he had a map. It was in the bureau drawer. A.44 Magnum, gleaming snakelike silver, slick to the touch, cold, impersonal. He hugged it between his legs to warm it. May as well feel comfortable for his final seconds.

Outside, the fourth leaf on the clover glowed brightly and then disappeared into a pinp.r.i.c.k of light. A transparent finger rose from the ground to scoop it up. Then it was gone.

”Well,” Adam said to the house, empty but alive with the memories he had brought here, planted and allowed to grow. ”It wasn't bad to begin with... but it could have been better.”

He heard footsteps approaching along the gravel driveway, frantic footsteps pounding toward the house.

”Adam!” someone shouted, emotion giving the voice an androgynous lilt.

It may have been Howards, regretting the news he had brought.

Or perhaps it was Amaranth? Realizing that he had slipped their attention for just too long. Knowing, finally, that he would defeat them.

Whoever. It was the last sound he would hear.

He placed the barrel of the gun inside his mouth, angled it upward and pulled the trigger.

The first thing he heard was Howards.

”... bounced off your skull and shattered your knee. They took your leg off too. But I suppose that won't really bother you much. The doctors say you were so lucky to survive. But then, they would.”

The shuffle of feet, the creak of someone standing from a plastic chair.

”I wish you could hear me. I wish you knew how sorry I am, Adam. I thought perhaps you could defeat them____________________”

He could not turn to see Howards. He saw nothing but the cracked ceiling. A polystyrene tile had s.h.i.+fted in its grid, and a triangle of darkness stared down at him. Perhaps there were eyes hidden within its gloom even now.

”I'm sorry.”

Footsteps as Howards left.

With a great effort, one that burned into his muscles and set them aflame, Adam lifted his hands. And he felt what was left of his head.